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.^'•^ : 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

ITS MEANING AND PROOF 



J. SCOTT LIDGETT, M.A. 

WARDEN OF THE BERMONDSET SETTLEMENT 

AUTHOR OF THE SPIRITtTAL PRINCIPLE OF THE ATONEMENT. THE FATHERHOOD OF 

GOD XN CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND LIFE, ETC. 




New York: EATON & MAINS 
Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






TWO Goultv ft-;,dlvc!(; 

. Ceoynffht r?^ttv 
CLASS /d AA./ ^}„. 



Copyright, 1907, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



XI ^ 



TO 

MY COLLEAGUES OF 

THE BERMONDSEY SETTLEMENT 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

OF 

THEIR STEADFAST FRIENDSHIP AND LOYAL COOPERATION 



\'* 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

Causes of dissatisfaction with existing systems of Christian Evidence 3 

This state of things not surprising , 5 

A threefold reason for the restatement of the nature and grounds of 
Christian belief: 

Firstly : The principles of continuity 5 

Secondly : The scientific point of view 7 

Thirdly : The claims of the spiritual consciousness 8 

The Christian consciousness must speak for itself 10 

Yet its expression will become systematic 11 

The result will establish the unique character and authority of the 

Christian religion 11 

The need of maintaining both continuity and distinction 12 

The course of the present inquiry. 12-13 



BOOK I 
THE HISTORY AND TASK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 

CHAPTER I 

The General History of Christian Evidences to the Rise of the 
Critical Philosophy 

Christian Evidences seek to prove the truth of the Christian Religion. 17 

I. Thife necessity is inherited from the Old Testament 17 

The main outlines of the proof therein offered 21 

II. An increased necessity to make good the truth of Christianity 

'in the early ages of its history 24 

III. With the general acceptance of Christianity a new phase of 

the history of Christian Evidences is reached 29 

Christianity as a spiritual philosophy 30 

IV. The Renaissance and the evidential task occasioned by it... 33 

V. Protestantism and doctrinal controversy 35 

VI. The Deistic controversy gives new importance to Christian 

Evidences 36 

VII. The critical philosophy of Kant 44 

V 



vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER II 

The Inadequacy of Existing Systems of Christian Evidences 
to Satisfy the Modern Point of View 

PAGE 

The advance of inductive inquiry 54 

The scientific point of view 55 

The necessity of criticizing scientific conceptions. 56 

Widespread hesitations 57 

Christian Evidences must justify the view of the value of human 

life upon which the Christian religion is built up 60 

How far are they adequate to present needs? 61 

Their incidental limitations 61 

The procedure generally adopted hitherto 62 

This does not reflect the history of theological belief 63 

The exaggerated distinction between natural and revealed religion . . 66 
Natural theology is an abstraction from the complete Christian 

doctrine of God 67 

Paley's Natural Theology 68 

His Evidences of Christianity 70 

Dr. Martineau's A Study of Religion 73 

The Ritschlian School and the proof of Christianity 81 

Kaftan's The Truth of the Christian Religion 82 

CHAPTER III 

The Task set to Christian Evidences in the Present Time 

The reasons of the inadequacy of the systems of Christian Evidences 

hitherto recognized 87 

What is meant by the proof of Christianity 88 

The view K>f Ritschl 91 

The course prescribed to Christian Evidences in the present day ... 95 

BOOK II 
CHRISTIANITY AS THE ABSOLUTE RELIGION 

CHAPTER I 
The Content of the Christian Religion 

The datum of Christian Evidences is Christ 101 

The first step therefore is to ascertain what is distinctive of Christ 

Himself 102 

I. Christ gives a final theology to the world as the expres- 
sion of a i)erf ect Religion 103 

1. This result is due to our Lord's consciousness of the 

Fatherhood of God as reflected in His perfect 

Sonship 104 

2. His consciousness of being the Sonj of Man 110 

3. Our Lord's claim to be the Christ Ill 

The way in which He transforms the conception 112 

4. His transformation of the doctrine of the kingdom of 

God 115 



TABLE OF CONTENTS vii 

PAGE 

5. Is there a transitory element in His teaching? 117 

6. The authenticity of His teaching 118 

7. The dioctrine of spiritual discernment in St. John's 

Gospel 119 

II. Our Lord as the source of the Christian Religion 126 

The apostolic teaching is experimental 126 

The experience is that of Sonship to God 127 

This experience is derived from a spiritual relationship to 

Christ 127 

It is attended by immense spiritual and moral consequences. 128 

Finally it is brought about by means of redemption from sin 128 
The experience of sonship thus brought about is the key to 
the whole doctrine of Salvation contained in the New 

Testament 129 

It is bound up with certain distinctive facts of the life of 

Christ 131 

The miraculous element in His life . . , 131 

The Christian doctrines lof the world^place of Christ and of 

the Godhead 134 

In what relation does Christianity, as thus outlined, stand 
to the spiritual consciousness of mankind and to the in- 
terpretation of the universe ? 137 



CHAPTER II 

The Factors of Religion 

The claim of Christianity can only be established by showing its 
relations to other religions. It is necessary at the outset to 

consider Religion in general 138 

The definition of Religion 139 

The factors of Religion 140 

I. The influence of activity 142 

II. The experience of dependence 145 

III. The affectional result 149 

IV. The moralizing of Religion 155 

V. The desire of the Infinite 158 

VI. The influence of particular events. 160 

The development of religious rites 162 

The Prophet and the Priest 164 

Religion and social order i64 

The whole man involved in the growth of Religion 165 

Religion and theology 166 

Influences affecting religious development 167 

The spiritual conception is determinative 170 

Theories of the development of Religion 171 

The influence of creative personalities on Religion 173 

Religion must be tested in its most perfect form 175 

The tests to be applied 176 



viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER III 
The Ethnic Religions 

PAGE 

The classification of Religions 181 

I, Nature-worships 183 

II. Ancestor-worship and Animism 189 

III. The Humanism of the Greeks 193 

IV. Confucianism or Moralism in Religion 196 

V. Philosophical reactions from popular naturalistic Religion . . 200 

Greek 200 

Brahmanism 202 

Buddhism 212 

VI. Dualism : Zoroastrianism 218 

VII. Mohammedanism 221 

The failure of all these types to satisfy the tests laid down. 222 

CHAPTER IV 
Christianity as the Fulfillment of Religion 

Christianity a revelation which becomes an experience 225 

I. This experience fulfills the idea and end of Religion 227 

II. Its marks are power and satisfaction 229 

III. Its experience of sonship is immediate in Christ, but 

mediated through Him for all others 231 

IV. His mediation consists not merely of Revelation and of Self- 

impartation, but also of Reconciliation and Redemption. 233 

V. The result is Regeneration through the Spirit 235 

VI. The Christian Doctrine of God is derived from this experience 236 

The connection of Christianity with Hebrew Religion 236 

The peculiarity of this Religion 237 

Christianity as a Missionary Religion 243 

The development of historic Christianity 244 

Christianity as the Absolute and Catholic Religion 246 

BOOK III 
THE PROOF OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

CHAPTER I 

The Primary Verification of Christianity 

Christianity is experimental 251 

This experience siatisfying and comprehensive 252 

The conditions of its proof ^ 253 

I. The primary argument that Christianity is indispensable to 

the full realization of the noblest human life 254 

1. Judgments of value 254 

2. They contain a revelation of God 259 

3. And are the key to the explanation of the world 265 "> 



TABLE OF CONTENTS Lx 

PAGE 

II. The sense of filial relationship to God is characteristic of the 

•highest spiritual consciousness 270 

The affirmations contained in it 271 

They are the foundation and fulfillment of that which is as- 
sumed by all truly human life 276 

Criticism of attempts to preserve it without its theistic basis. 282 

1. "Cosmic Emotion" 282 

2. The Religion of Humanity 283 

3. The worship of the Infinite and the Absolute as 

impersonal 284 

4. Hoflfding's faith in "Conservation of Value" 285 

CHAPTER II 

The Christian Explanation of the World and the Rejoinder of 
Naturalism 

1. The world to be explained is an ordered system, mani- 

festing a regular development and fulfilling many 
special ends 300 

2. The world is apprehended as being thus ordered and is 

utilized by Reason 302 

3. The development of this ordered, and therefore reason- 

able, system of things is marked by the successive in- 
troduction of higher and more complex forms of 
existence seeking higher ends 302 

4. Hence the world takes a new beginning with Man, who 

creates civilization 303 

5. Man attaining this ideal existence of civilization is re- 

ligious 304 

6. The whole system is fulfilled in and mediated by Christ. 305 
To this Christian explanation of the world is opposed the Naturalis- 
tic, which necessitates : 

1. The expulsion of final causes from the world of reality. . 311 

2. The reduction of the world to Substance manifesting it- 

self in Matter (313), Motion (316), Life and Con- 
sciousness 316 

3. A doctrine of Evolution 317 

and 

4. An attitude of Agnosticism : Mansel, Spencer, Balfour. ^1 

CHAPTER III 
The Criticism of Naturalism 

I. The philosophical position assumed by Agnosticism 330 

1. Agnosticism contradicts man's natural instinct of ex- 

planation 330 

2. Attempts to secure the practical advantages of Ma- 

terialism, while evading its metaphysical difficulties.. 331 



X TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

3. Covertly brings in the explanations it expressly ex- 

cludes 332 

and 

4. Is as "anthropomorphic" as theistic belief. Criticism 

of Kant, Spencer, and Haeckel 333 

II. The doctrine of Evolution: 

Gaps in the Naturalistic explanation — the introduction of 

Life and of Consciousness 341 

Three elements essential to the conception of Evolution for 
■which Naturalism does not account : 

1. An immanent end in the universe 343 

2. An organized system for realizing that end 343 

3. A persistent energy adequate to the result 343 

The impossibility of explaining the change from chaos to 

order by chance or accident 344 

Naturalism cannot account for consciousness and choice, the 
principal results of Evolution 348 

III. The world cannot be explained by the action and interaction 

of Matter and Motion 352 

What is Matter? Motion? Energy? 353 

Anthropomorphic conceptions read into them by Naturalism. 360 

IV. The reality and interpretation of final causes in Nature 361 

Criticism of Spinoza and Spencer 362 

The "Power" at the back of the process of Evolution a 

rational Power, and the resulting universe a system of 
spiritual values 372 

CHAPTER IV 
The Argument From Design 

The Wider Teleology 375 

Of greater weight in confirming than in creating faith 376 

Answers to objections to the Argument: 

1. That it cannot prove the existence of an absolute Creator. . . 381 

2. That it suggests limits to the Creator's power 382 

3. That it involves the necessity of choice on His part, which 

is contrary to the divine perfection 383 

4. And a need of satisfaction, which is contrary to His eternal 

blessedness 385 

5. That it treats things as means to ulterior ends 386 

6. That the significance of the facts is exaggerated, and their 

testimony to the being and character of God inconclusive : 

(1) Many of the examples of design adduced are faulty, e. g. 

the human eye 387 

(2) These examples are not the predominant features in 

Nature : there is much that is purposeless 389 

(3) The existence of evil, moral and physical, proves that its 

designer is either not beneficent or not omnipotent. . . . 390 
Four cases in regard to evil specially examined : 

1. Where apparent purpose seems to be either abortive or in- 
completely fulfilled 396 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAOB 

2. Where the purpose fulfilled appears to be that of deliberately 

causing pain 398 

3. Where the purposes involved in different forms of existence 

appear to be mutually destructive 399 

4. Where the seemingly puri)oseless, or that which is inferior in 

the worth of its purpose, interferes with purpioses of 

higher value 400 

The mystery and the ministry of suffering and death 401 

Summary and conclusion of the general argument for the Christian _ 

and Theistic explanation of the world 404 , 



CHAPTER V 
The Christian Doctrine of Man and of Redemption 

The divine end in man involved in the spiritual constitution of his 
nature and culminating in conscious sonship to God is reached 
by way of redemption 411 

The Christian doctrine of redemption is unique in that it is a reve- 
lation of divine grace through the incarnation and sacrifice of 
Christ, and an act of deliverance in which both God and man 
cooperate; salvation being both a divine operation and a vital 
spiritual process 413 

The doctrine assumes and sets forth three fundamental facts : 

I. That man is possessed of spiritual freedom 420 

1. The judgment of consciousness is that while man is 

conditioned by the material, he is not subject to its 
necessity 422 

2. Man is influenced by motives, but not determined by 

them 426 

3. The sovereignty of God is compatible with moral 

personality 433 

II. That mankind is involved in sin 436 

1. Sin is not a necessity of development 438 

2. Or contrary to the facts of evolution 441 

3. Nor is the "fallen" world a "ruined" world 444 

III, That man's redemption is due to a transcendent dealing with 

him by God 446 

1. The Incarnation is the transcendent fulfillment of the 

possibilities contained in the divine immanence in 
mankind 456 

2. The Atonement is the direct outcome of the relationship 

in which God stands to man 458 

The death of Christ completes the union of the Son of 
Gk)d with the lot of men, and fulfills the relations in 

which He stands alike to God and man 459 

His sacrifice was a complete satisfaction offered to 
God for the sin of the world, and an expression of 
His love for man and His regard for righteousness. 461 



\ 



xii TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

3. The redemptive work of Christ issues in the life of the 

Spirit, with its quickening energy and moral power. 463 
and 

4. In a consummated humanity and a renovated and 

eternal world 467 

CHAPTER VI 
The Doctrine of God 

That doctrine is the reflective product of Revelation within and by 
means of human consciousness, in a measure in all men, 
supremely in Christ 481 

In the Christian revelation God is presented to us as our Father ; 
'in which conception of Him and of His relation to the world 
are included the following elements : 

I. The personality of God 485 

II. The spiritual perfection of God 489 

III. The transcendence and immanence of God 496 

IV. The sovereignty of God, in accordance with, and for the sake 

of, the highest ends 498 

V. The supremacy of love in God 501 

VI. The unity in the Godhead of internal self-realization, of 
external self-communication, and of satisfaction in the 
return of creation to Himself in fellowship and service . . 504 
VII. In conclusion, the supreme truth of Revelation and of Rea- 
son is the Christian doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, 
which verifies itself as affording the indispensable, com- 
plete, and only explanation of the meaning and end of the 

Universe 507 

Index 511 



PREFACE 

THIS book forms the sequel to my former work, entitled 
The Fatherhood of God in Christian Truth and 
Life. It is an attempt to explain and verify the 
Christian religion by means of the fatherly-filial re- 
lationship, the supremacy and meaning of which for Christian 
consciousness and theolog}^ was investigated in the former work. 
The book has been prepared under very great difficulties, owing 
to the ceaseless pressure of public engagements. It is to be 
feared that it has suffered thereby. Moreover, its scope is so 
extensive that it has been impossible to fill in many details, 
while some important subjects connected with the exposition 
and proof of Christianity have been but lightly touched upon 
or in some cases omitted altogether. The purpose of the book 
is rather to establish a general point of view than to treat the 
subject with the exhaustiveness of a Compendium of Christian 
Evidences. 

The popular discussion of what is commonly called the 
!N'ew Theology did not take place till this book was practically 
completed. It has, therefore, been impossible, even if it had 
been otherwise desirable, to enter into the current controversy 
on the subject. It will be found, however, that many of the 
subjects of the controversy are dealt with, and that a serious 
attempt is made to give full effect to the truth of the 
immanence, while steadfastly maintaining the transcendence, of 
God. 

I am, of course, greatly indebted to many sources in working 
out the view of Christianity and of its relation to Eeality, which 
is outlined in these pages. Special acknowledgment, however, 
must be made of the obligation that I am under to Dr. James 
"Ward for his Gifford Lectures on Naturalism and Agnosticism, 

xiii 



xiv PREFACE 

and to Mr. J. Theodore Merz for his History of European 
Thought in the Nineteenth Century, So far as the results of 
the science of religion are concerned, I have derived help from 
many works, but not least of all from The Philosophy of the 
Upanishads, by Principal Gough. 

In conclusion, I would offer my grateful thanks to the 
friends who have so kindly relieved me as far as possible of the 
mechanical work of preparing the book for the press, and to the 
Eev. W. F. Lofthouse, M.A., who has again assisted me by 
reading a large part of it in manuscript, and has made valuable 
suggestions. 

I am deeply sensible of the inadequacy of the book to the 
great subject with which it deals. Yet it seemed a duty to 
attempt to complete the task previously begun, in the hope of 
helping some seekers after truth in a period of transition and 
uncertainty. I trust that my endeavor, despite its imperfec- 
tions, may be used by the Spirit of Truth to this end. 

J. SCOTT LIDGETT. 

July, 1907. 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 



INTRODUCTION 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

ITS MEANING AND PROOF 

INTRODUCTION 

IT cannot be denied that widespread dissatisfaction exists 
at the present time with the ordinary systems of 
Christian Evidence. To some extent this is the case in 
regard to the statements of Christian doctrine which they 
seek to substantiate. Yet it is still more so in regard to the 
general point of view from which the subject is approached 
and to the arguments by which the truth of Christianity is 
upheld. Those who are not convinced in the matter feel that 
their difficulties have not been realized, still less met. Those 
who are convinced are disappointed, because the deepest grounds 
of their belief are inadequately set forth. 

There are several main reasons for this state of things. 
In the first place, the philosophic outlook has greatly altered 
in recent years. It is true that comparatively few are 
directly affected by such changes. Yet philosophic thought 
is more closely related to the general intellectual character- 
istics of an age than is often supposed. A great philosophy 
is the formal expression of widespread tendencies of thought 
which are not in themselves philosophical. Because of these 
general relationships its main conceptions pass out almost 
insensibly and by many channels, till from being the property 
of the few they affect the outlook of the many. Hence at 
the present time influences are widely diffused which are in 
their origin philosophic, and these create the impression that 
the Christian Evidences of the past are built upon intellectual 
foundations which cannot bear the weight of the conclusions 
resting on them. The vast increase of knowledge has not 

3 



4 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

merely added immense stores of information to the intellectual 
wealth of mankind, but has forced us to revise many of our con- 
ceptions of the relations in which things stand to one another, 
and in which the past of the universe stands to the present. 
The wholeness of the universe in all its parts and throughout 
its history has been brought home to the modern mind as never 
before. Hence any treatment of Christianity which seeks to 
emphasize its claims by completely isolating it from the history 
and meaning of the world and man as a whole brings its ad- 
vocates into collision with the most powerful forces of present- 
day thought. If the unique character and the divine claims of 
Christianity are to be acknowledged by those who enter into 
the modern point of view, it must be by laying bare its relations 
to the inmost nature of humanity and of the universe as ful- 
filling the ends for which they exist, and not by separating it 
in thought from the whole texture of reality in order subse- 
quently to establish its truth by evidences, the force of which 
is held to be altogether due to their exceptional char- 
acter. 

Closely bound up with the apparent defect of Christian Evi- 
dences just alluded to is their failure to give satisfaction to the 
spiritual consciousness of Christian believers by giving an ade- 
quate account of the grounds of their certitude. There must be 
something wrong with any system of Christian Evidences which 
is essentially alien to the mind and chilling to the heart of the 
intensest Christian faith. This has certainly not seldom been 
the case in the past. Its effect has often been so serious as to 
cause a reaction on the part of simple and fervid piety against 
any attempt to establish by reasoning the truth of the Christian 
religion. 

The force of these difficulties has been felt by all the 
more thoughtful and sympathetic theologians of recent times. 
Important and successful efforts have been made both to 
set forth and to establish the relation of Christianity to the 
whole order of things as being its fulfillment, and also to 
explain and indicate the inner reason of faith in it as the 
truth. Yet such attempts have so far been neither suf- 
ficiently numerous and representative to supersede the im- 
pressions of the older teaching, nor sufficiently systematic to 



INTRODUCTION D 

establish a new point of view more entirely in consonance 
with the fundamental principles of modern thought. Hence 
much work remains to be done before the old truth can 
be enabled to speak with convincing power to the new 
thought. 

No student of history will be surprised that this need 
should exist. The systems of thought which ecclesiastical 
authority sometimes seeks to bind in perpetuity upon the 
mind of Christians were for the most part when they 
appeared daring innovations, or at least the final and formal 
expression of spiritual and intellectual changes akin to those 
which are taking place at the present time. Their appearance 
was necessitated by exactly the same intellectual unrest, 
both within and without the Church, which is felt at the 
present day. The only difference is one of degree, both as 
to the variety of new issues raised in modern times and the 
number of minds affected by them. This difference is, how- 
ever, comparatively unimportant. The main facts to be 
borne in mind are these: In the first place, that the prog- 
ress of Christianity has been primarily due to the spiritual 
experience and not to the formal doctrine of the Church. 
Secondly, that the growth of that experience and its manifold 
contact with the world and life as a whole has entailed 
intellectual consequences and given rise to many succeeding 
attempts at formal explanation. And, lastly, that the success 
of such attempts must be measured by their power to satisfy 
the Christian consciousness itself, and to give an account of 
its relationship to the universe and its history which meets 
all the claims, whether spiritual, moral, or rational, which 
can rightfully be made upon it. 

Three governing necessities affect the present demand for a 
restatement of the nature and grounds of Christian belief. In 
the first place, the emphasis which modem thought lays upon 
the principle of continuity throughout the whole range of 
reality. The universe as it exists involves the union of 
continuity and distinction, of sameness and difference. Without 
continuity there could be no order of things; without distinc- 
tion no variety. The thought which would give a satisfactory 
explanation of reality must hold fast to both these elements. 



6 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Yet there are times when a deepened sense of the one 
endangers the position of the other. In earlier modern times, 
and especially in Western thought, the principle of distinction 
has often been so emphasized that the sense of continuity has 
been wellnigh destroyed. The distinctions between God, man, 
and the world, have often been pressed to the point of regarding 
them as in merely external relations to one another, and 
sometimes to the extreme of a supposed intrinsic opposition 
between them. The attributes of God have been conceived as 
existing and working more or less independently of one 
another, and little or no effort has been made to show that 
His different manifestations of Himself are aspects of one 
supreme and comprehensive relationship which varies in the 
fullness of its expression according to the capacity or the fitness 
of its object. A similar tendency in regard to man has 
severed his spiritual from his common interests, has treated 
his powers as a bundle of faculties, loosely knit together by 
the bond of self-consciousness, and has magnified his indepen- 
dence of the natural order of things, to which in some sense 
he obviously belongs. These are but a few of the illustrations 
that might be given. The same tendency was equally marked in 
physical science, with its attempt to multiply distinct elements, 
forces, and operations in nature. 

A variety of causes has in recent times brought the principle 
of continuity to the forefront. The present danger is not 
that distinctions should be exaggerated but that they should 
be ignored. Almost the whole stress is at present laid upon 
unity and affinity. So far as God is concerned, the, effort to 
realize an unbroken consistency of purpose and an all-com- 
prehending relationship has not only criticised the cruder 
representations of the religious imagination and superseded 
many artificial combinations of the divine attributes, but has, 
sometimes at least, imperiled all that is most essential to the 
belief in His supreme and holy personality. In the case of 
man, the attempt to separate parts and powers of his complex 
being from one another has been succeeded by an attempt at 
unification, which, rather than fail, will suppress the most 
direct and hitherto unquestioned testimony of his own 
consciousness, in order to secure the advantage of continuity 



INTRODUCTION 7 

and to escape the difficulties of distinction. The same tendency 
is at work in phj'sical science, alike in the effort to reach one 
underlying substance and to explain the whole order and 
history of all things by one pervading energj^ Nor does this 
attempt to realize continuity end here. It includes in its 
efforts the endeavor to find an underlying unity between 
God, man, and the vorld. This is what is meant by the new 
insistence upon the immanence of God. The truth which is 
involved in this conception has never been overlooked by the 
highest exponents of Christian Theism. Yet undoubtedly it 
was endangered by the hardened distinctions which at present 
we term deistic, but which prevailed far beyond the immediate 
circle of those who can be called Deists, in the strict sense of 
the term. Such an effort to secure unity and continuity may, 
of course, be pressed so far as to ignore obvious facts, to fall 
into hopeless confusion of thought, and seriously to imperil 
grave spiritual and moral interests. Yet the very fact of its 
exaggerations shows the urgency of the principle in the 
modern mind. Clearly the task set to Christian thought is to 
take adequate account of the principle of continuity, while main- 
taining the distinctive differences upon the validity of which the 
integrity of spiritual experience depends. 

In the second place, the scientific point of view must be 
borne in mind. Here, above all, the ultimate explanation is 
sought in the complete establishment of the principle of 
continuity. The immediate effect is to establish the historic^, 
comparative, and psychological points of view. So far as the 
first of these is concerned, the conception of evolution causes 
ever increasing stress to be laid upon the description and 
explanation, even of the most highly specialized products, in 
the light of the processes by means of which they have come 
into existence. Inquiry is not content to take them in 
themselves and as a new beginning, without tracing out the 
whole course of their development. The same principle 
involves not merely continuit}^ with the past, but also 
throughout the whole range of present existence, and therefore 
the adoption of methods of comparative description. Further, 
general metaphysics has somewhat fallen into the background, 
whUe psycholog}', both introspective and experimental, has 



8 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

greatly advanced its claims, either as a substitute or as the only 
sure foundation of metaphysical generalization. 

All these features at once affect the treatment of the 
phenomena of Christian religion. Modern thought assumes 
that whatever may be their ultimate explanation there is a 
natural history of their development which can be investi- 
gated. This may mean the denial of the supernatural in 
regard to them. On the other hand, the reality of the super- 
natural may be recognized, provided it be acknowledged that 
when the supernatural enters into history it conforms to the 
conditions which govern historic progress throughout. Hence 
the whole temper of modern thought in respect to religion 
prompts it to take advantage of modern investigation in regard 
to non-Christian religions, and insists that, however unique 
may be the Christian consciousness, it should be treated in 
connection with all other embodiments of the religious 
faculties throughout history, and should justify its peculiar 
claims, if at all, as being the unique fulfillment of that which 
is more imperfectly revealed elsewhere. Such an attempt can- 
not succeed without increased attention to the psychology of 
religion. 

In the third place, more distinctively spiritual influences 
must be recognized. A growing importance is attached in 
many quarters to the personal and experimental note in 
religion. It is felt that the spiritual consciousness must 
contain within itself the means of its own verification, or 
failing this, that its proof can be found nowhere else. This 
formal conclusion is illustrated by the growing influence 
exerted in many quarters by the accent of personal conviction 
in regard to the Christian religion. This influence is not 
purely moral, but has distinctly intellectual elements. The 
reason of this is well stated by the late Dr. Hort in the intro- 
duction to his invaluable Hulsean Lectures on The Way, the 
Truth, the Life, 

"The impulse,^' he says, "to give the discussion of Chris- 
tian evidences an argumentative shape proceeds from a right 
source, a sense of the untrustworthiness of beliefs founded 
exclusively on cravings and sympathies, and still more of the 
difficulty of conveying these grounds of assurance to others. 



INTRODUCTIOlSr 9 

But this well-founded desire to be rational leads easily to the 
suppressing of personality as inconsistent with an impartial 
balance of judgment. Not to speak now of the personal 
factor which must enter into every perception of comprehen- 
sive truth, the effort to be impersonal affects injuriously the dis- 
cussion of Christian evidences to at least this extent, that it 
beguiles Christians into setting forth the considerations which 
ought, they think, to be convincing to others, with little or no 
reference to what has actually exerted power over their own 
minds. This vicarious or dramatic pleading cannot escape un- 
reality, except where either its scope is negative — that is, the 
dialectic refutations of objections — or it is dealing with literary 
or historical or physical phenomena on a purely literary or 
historical or physical footing; and consequently it can have 
no final persuasiveness except toward those peculiar minds 
whose own beliefs or disbeliefs are formed or retained exclusively 
within these same limits. With or without good reason, most 
men who seek foundations on which to build a conviction on 
grave subjects — ^not excuses for adhering to an opinion — find no 
help in arguments which, however honestly urged, bear no trace 
of having proceeded from an actual experience of help already 
needed and found.^'^ 

The growing prominence of this demand is due to the 
correction of the exaggerated intellectualism which at one 
time prevailed in regard to the explanation of the world 
because it already prevailed in the psychology of man. N"ot 
only were the intellect, the emotions, and the will distinguished 
from one another, but it was assumed that they worked 
independently of one another. Thinkers attached almost 
exclusive importance to the intellect, at any rate so far as the 
interpretation of the universe was concerned. Such separa- 
tion is no longer possible. Moreover, the establishment of the 
principle of evolution has brought the fact of activity in 
pursuit of ends into the foreground, and has led many to 
assign to it priority over the theoretic intellect, not merely in 
order of time, but in importanca It seems more hopeful to 
attempt to discover the meaning of the world through the 
ends which man is constrained by the nature of his being to 

1 Loc. cit. pp. XXX, xxxi. 



10 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

seek, than by any other means. Here again it is impossible 
to isolate one element from the rest. Man's activity is not 
determined automatically, or without relation to the universe 
around him. Activity is conditioned by susceptibility, and 
susceptibility reveals the presence of realities to which it 
makes response. Intellectual wonder or curiosity may be one 
of the original springs of action. In that case the primitive 
and permanent attempt to know may be taken as evidence 
that the secret of the universe is not unknowable. But 
beyond this, man^s susceptibility and activity are not self- 
contained, but are the means of his relationship to the 
universe, which can influence and satisfy him only because 
he is akin to it, and needs to find himself increasingly at 
home in it. Hence the testimony of men of distinguished 
character and deep insight as to the needs which they expe- 
rience and as to the way in which those needs are met, is a 
revelation of the meaning of human nature first of all, and 
then of the universe in which human nature finds itself 
placed. Such a revelation is of var}dng degrees of importance 
according to the depth, the comprehensiveness, and the 
tjrpical character of those whose testimony is given. This 
last implies that the effect of such testimony depends upon 
the extent to which common men find the secrets of their 
own hearts laid bare in the prophetic utterances of the intui- 
tions and principles which have inspired the greatest of 
mankind. 

Hence the importance of making the Christian conscious- 
ness speak for itself in establishing the meaning and truth of 
the Christian religion. It must not be allowed to reduce 
itself to lower forms, whether of religion or of thought, nor 
to take such as the criteria of its truth. It must make 
explicit the principles of its own life and the secret of its own 
experience. Yet its success in establishing its own truth by 
so doing will depend upon its power to demonstrate the 
solidarity of its own most peculiar experience with the whole 
texture of human life and history, and through them with the 
universe itself. It is as the great and indispensable Fulfill- 
ment, as the everlasting Yea to all the promises of God 
which are contained in the nature and needs of man, that 



INTRODUCTION 11 

Christianity must exhibit both its full meaning and its ultimate 
verification. In carrying out this task there is need for the 
fullest and most man3'-sided expression by thoughtful Christians 
of "the personal factor" to which Dr. Hort alludes; though, as 
he proceeds to point out, "Everj^thing personal is in a measure 
absolutely inexpressible; and further, is relatively inexpressible 
by reason of the complexities and gradations vrhich distinguish 
vital from artificial structure."^ 

Yet it is impossible to rest in the more or less successful 
attempt to give expression to the personal factor. The result 
aimed at by such expression must be to establish a common 
point of view, the details of which are filled in by the 
manifold experiences of differing individualities. Hence 
fresh attempts at the systematic presentation of Christian 
Evidences must follow from the new endeavor to make 
Christian experience speak for itself. It cannot remain 
subjective if it is to be convincing. And if it is to become 
objective it must needs once more become systematic. There 
is need, therefore, of renewed effort so to bring out the 
relation of the Christian consciousness to the world of reality 
and truth, that it may become increasingly manifest that it con- 
tains within itself the only means of a rational interpretation 
of the whole. 

If such an attempt be made, it may well turn out that 
when full justice has been done to the principle of continuity, 
and when full use has been made of the historical and com- 
parative method, the unique character and authority of the 
Christian religion stands out in clearer light. To begin with, 
it should become clear that we are concerned, not to find a 
new religion, but simply a new philosophy of it; and further, 
that this new philosophy is essentially an attempt to make 
the old spirit supply its own interpretation, instead of seeking 
it from sources outside itself. If this be borne in mind it will 
appear to be of the first consequence that the vital deliver- 
ances of the Christian consciousness should be maintained in 
their complete integrity. Some of these are clearly of critical 
importance. For example, both the transcendence and the 
immanence of God have had ceaseless witness borne to them 



1 The Way, the Truth, the Life, p. xxxii. 



12 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

in all the noblest utterances of Christian piety. Speculative 
Christian thought must sacrifice neither, but must endeavor 
so to explain both that each shall be seen to be complementary 
to the other. The Christian consciousness of sin and of re- 
demption from it, is vital. If these be explained away or trifled 
with, what remains is not entitled to the name of Christianity 
at all. Again, the reality of revelation and the meaning of 
grace as a free and merciful self-bestowment of God must 
equally be upheld in any explanation of the meaning or estab- 
lishment of the truth of Christianity. Lastly, all these center 
in the unique position and significance of Christ Himself. A 
true exposition and successful defence of Christianity must 
exalt, and not belittle Him. Yet it may well be that the truth 
of His exaltation depends upon the fact that He does not stand 
apart from the whole course of history and from the inmost 
nature of man, but that He is so eternally one with both, that, as 
St. Paul says, "All things have been created through Him and 
unto Him.^' 

The greatest task set to Christian theology at the present 
time is to give due and balanced effect to the principles both 
of continuity and of distinction in regard to all the great 
matters which have just been enumerated. To sacrifice either 
is fatal both to the understanding of Christianity and to the 
establishment of its truth. It is precisely the heavenly origin 
of Christianity which insures that when it makes its appear- 
ance in the world it comes, not as a stranger and foreigner, 
but as the end for which all things have prepared the way. 
The mistake of regarding it as purely external, and as main- 
tained by supports which, though nominally divine, are really 
artificial, is to do feeble justice to the distinctively spiritual 
point of view. 

The following pages represent an effort in this direction. 
The difficulty of such an attempt is obvious. Many impor- 
tant subjects must be omitted altogether, and many must be 
treated slightly, in order that the general point of view may 
be made good. Yet the establishment of such a point of view 
involves a survey that is extremely wide. It is impossible to 
deal with the present needs of Christian Evidences without 
reviewing their past history. The meaning of Christianity 



INTRODUCTION 13 

must be ascertained, and this includes setting forth its relation 
both to religion in general and also to the great types of historic 
religion. Its proof involves the discussion of its relation to the 
spiritual consciousness and to the explanation of the world, the 
justification of its doctrine of man and redemption, and the 
examination of the doctrine of God that results, in order to see 
that it is not involved in intellectual confusion or contradiction. 
Such is the course marked out for detailed investigation in the 
three parts of the present inquiry. 



BOOK I 

THE HISTORY AND TASK OF CHRISTIAN 
EVIDENCES 



CHAPTER I 

THE GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 
TO THE RISE OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

IF the question be asked. What is the function of Christian 
Evidences? the usual answer would be that their object 
is to prove the truth of the Christian religion. This 
would be more closely defined as meaning that their task is 
to prove the truth of the doctrine of God, of man, of the 
world, and of their mutual relations, which Christianity sets 
forth. Such a proof would include, at least, establishing the 
reality of the objects of the Christian religion, making good 
the position that the events which manifest these objects 
actually took place, and showing that the view of life which 
is based upon the reality of these objects and the truth of 
these events is reasonable and authoritative. In recent times, 
for reasons to be more fully explained later on, two other 
elements have been added to the task. It is necessary to prove 
on philosophical grounds the trustworthiness of the revelation 
by which the objects of the Christian religion are made manifest, 
and, correspondingly, the trustworthiness of the faculties by 
which men apprehend this revelation, or, to speak more gen- 
erally, apprehend ultimate reality at all. Those who ex- 
pound Christian doctrine, or press its claims on the consciences 
and hearts of men, are constrained, if challenged, to main- 
tain its truth. A short historical survey is necessary in 
order to understand what is involved in this, and how it has 
come to pass. 

I. In the first place, the necessity of making good the 
truth of the Christian religion is inherited from the Old 
Testament. 

17 



18 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

What the prophets are, above all, concerned to establish is, 
that Jehovah is the only true God. The principles of worship 
and of conduct which they enforce, are enjoined as being the 
only true response to the revelation of the one true God. 
This is the most striking distinction between Prophetic 
religion and all forms of Pagan religion, whether ancient or 
modern. To pass from Old Testament religion to the religions 
of other ancient nations, for example, of Greece or Eome, is 
to find the unrestrained exercise of naive and uncritical 
imagination. Such religions are not without rational and ethical 
elements ; but there is an entire absence in them of any adequate 
ethical end, and of any rationally consistent system, showing 
the coherence between the objects of worship, the nature of 
men, and the constitution of the world. Above all, it never 
occurs to tlie worshiper, when he has recounted his myths or 
performed his ceremonies, to ask himself or others. Is this true ? 
For the most part the whole religion is based upon a narrow 
nationalism, which is in itself sufficient to destroy its 
universal validity. 

In all these respects Polytheism is a true reflection of the 
imaginative, uncritical, unsystematic, and unethical condition 
of mind which characterizes its creators. Sometimes religion 
takes brighter and healthier forms, sometimes more somber 
and morbid, according to the temperament of the nation. In 
some cases the same religion, in varying moods, reflects now 
the more genial and now the gloomier or austerer influences 
which from time to time prevail. But beneath all superficial 
differences, unreflective and uncritical imagination is the uni- 
versal characteristic of the religion. 

In this respect, it can hardly be said to have doctrines at all in 
the sense in which we understand the term. These imply more 
or less formal definition, and, therefore, a state of reflection about 
the objects and acts of religion which has not been reached in 
ordinary Paganism. What is believed takes poetic forms, 
worthier or less worthy, and creates practices of outward ob- 
servance, but not a body of reasoned teaching in which the facts 
of life are seen in systematic connection as governed by supreme, 
spiritual, and moral ends. 

Hence, in some cases, notably in that of Greece, as reason 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 19 

and morality developed, they broke away from the popular 
religion and took an independent growth. Progress in both 
lay with the philosophers, and not with the representatives of 
the popular religion. In the pursuit of tnith and of moral 
progress the philosophers became the severest critics of the 
accepted religion. By this breaking asunder of religion on 
the one hand, and of reflection and moral enthusiasm on the 
other, religion was left without any inner principle of progress, 
while philosophy and morals were largely, though not entirely, 
severed from the inspiration of religion. "Wisdom and moral 
inspiration were unable, from the outside, to transform the 
religion. They were either at warfare with it, or conformed 
to it with insincere profession and with a perfunctory practice 
of its external rites. Only when the influence of Christianity 
had been felt was the attempt made by Neo-Platonism to make 
religion philosophical and philosophy religious by reading 
anew the old myths and ceremonies in the light of philosophic 
reflection. 

On the other hand, the Eoman state religion was an 
elaborate attempt to utilize religious principle and emotion, 
not for the sake of truth, but for the consolidation of the 
Government, and to secure loyalty for its oflBcers and insti- 
tutions. 

In the case of the Old Testament, all is different. There 
are, however, passages of the prophetic books which show 
how narrowly a similar danger was averted. The prophecies 
of Isaiah and of Jeremiah, for example, show how near the 
religion of spiritual reason and ethical enthusiasm was to 
breaking with the cult of the temple and of the priesthood. 
That the danger was turned aside, and that there is exhibited 
an ordered progress, in which growth in wisdom and morality 
deepens and enriches the religion, and is inspired by the religion 
in its turn, is exactly one of those features which mark the 
unique character of the Old Testament religion and of its 
development. 

At the same time, there are, in the Old Testament, clear 
and unmistakable signs of an ordered growth from the more 
childlike to the more reflective stages of religion, a growth 
which advances step by step with the development of spiritual 



^0 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

life, and of mental and moral power. And as the result of this 
advance the religion of the Old Testament was not merely held 
as an immediate belief, but was declared authoritatively by the 
prophets, reflectively by sages, to be the truth. 

It is well to examine the essential conditions which enable and 
require what has been intuitively believed to be held and set forth 
as the truth. Eour such conditions are necessary. 

1. The growth of reflection and the application of reflection 
to religion. While the minds of men simply pass from one mood 
to another and alternate between what they receive from the 
world in perception and what they fashion within themselves by 
fancy, everything presented in consciousness is by turns treated 
as real. Men can tolerate the greatest contradictions because 
their moods are so separate that their products, however incon- 
sistent with one another, are never brought into immediate 
conflict. It is as men come to remember, compare, and con- 
nect that they seek to harmonize beliefs, and to bring the 
creations of their reason or of their imagination into defined 
relations with what they are compelled to treat as objectively and 
universally valid. 

2. But ethical advance and inspiration is even more important 
than the growth of reflection. 

Only as a man seeks to be true himself does he seek for 
truth in his religion. It is as he sets a standard of veracity 
to himself that he demands of his religion that it should 
correspond with facts. The man who seeks after truthfulness 
and truth as the chief concern of life must have a true God 
or none at all. Hence, when the ethical end of religion 
became increasingly explicit within it, it became clear that 
truth of character and conduct depend on conformity to truth 
of reality, and that the highest function of religion is to lead 
men to that truth of reality and to conformity of spirit 
with it. 

In this process the intellectual interest is secondary. It is not 
a scientific interest which makes the Old Testament prophets 
demand and set forth the truth of Jehovah. It is the moral 
necessity, though this leads ultimately to a rational system of 
world-explanation in terms of the God who satisfies the spiritual 
and moral need. 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 21 

3. Not only are reflection and moral development necessary 
to make the truth of religion its corner-stone, but also the 
presence of difference. If the man who holds this or that 
belief were never to meet with any one who believed differ- 
ently, he would never feel called upon either to assert the 
truth of what he believes or to prove it. To prove the 
reality of anything which is unquestioned is a work of super- 
erogation. Hence it was as, first of all, within Israel the 
prophets became distinguished from the multitude by their 
higher and more spiritual faith, and, in the second place, as 
Israel itself came into close and many-sided contact with 
nations holding a different faith, that the contention that 
Jehovah, as conceived by the prophets, is the only true God, 
was called for. 

4. Once more, it is not sufficient merely to be brought into 
contact with difference, but to have the ethical exclusiveness 
which is bent on overcoming that difference. The condition 
of such exclusiveness is the ethical emphasis to which atten- 
tion has already been directed. Such difference had to be 
overcome, first of all, within the borders of Israel, and later 
on when presented by the nations with which Israel came 
into contact. A latitudinarian spirit of universal toleration 
would have kept the prophet, if he could have existed on 
such terms, from insisting upon his religion as alone true. It 
was because contact with difference brought out the deter- 
mination to overcome that difference, first by securing truth 
in Israel, and then by hoping and preparing for the triumphs 
of truth throughout the world, that the prophet was con- 
strained to dwell upon the truth, the exclusive truth, of his 
religion. The prophetic religion of the Old Testament is, 
therefore, in conflict with all other religions directly it 
comes into contact with them. And, under the conditions, 
its victory can only be secured by the demonstration 
through prophetic teaching and divine manifestation that it 
is true. 

What are the main outlines of the proof that is offered ? 
1. In the first place, it unfolds and appeals to a direct spiritual 
consciousness. 

The prophets give expression to their sense of the 



22 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

immediate and illuminating presence of the living, character- 
upholding, world-explaining God. Their consciousness confirms 
and enlarges the simple experience of patriarchal religion. It 
rises from time to time to the vividness of direct vision.^ 
Whatever external evidence they bring is cogent largely by reason 
of this direct consciousness of God. They do not start from a 
godless spirit to discover an external God. They have the 
consciousness of the immediate presence of God, and of certain 
definite relations with Him. Finding Him within themselves, 
they go on to find Him everywhere manifest in the world to 
which they belong. They bring this consciousness forward as 
the sole source of spiritual satisfaction, of reasonable interpre- 
tation of life, and of reconciliation between the facts of inward 
and outward experience. 

2. The ethical note is always predominant. The God whom 
the prophets set forth as true is the source and the standard of 
their pursuit of righteousness. He is the only satisfaction of it. 
Herein is the highest proof that He alone is true. To awaken 
the desire of righteousness in the hearts of the people is to make 
good the sovereignty of Jehovah. 

3. If the moral nature and needs of men furnish the first 
verification of their spiritual consciousness of Jehovah, history 
provides the second. The history of their race and of mankind, 
as it is unfolded to the prophets, is being wrought out for the 
ethical ends which Jehovah has revealed, and those ends are 
served by the whole order of the world. Sometimes the will 
of Jehovah is accomplished by a miracle, or mighty act; 
oftener by the order of nature itself. Above all, the divine 
purpose is fulfilled by great providential events, such as the 
redemption from Egypt, or the raising up of leaders like 
Moses and David in earlier history; such as the advent of 
Cyrus and the return from Babylon in later times. The 
prophets find as they examine it that the history of the world 
is a unity controlled by one holy God for holy and righteous 
ends, which He works out by combined acts of judgment and 
salvation of which either the record and results remain, or 
they themselves have been living witnesses. The manifesta- 
tion of the reality of Jehovah is to be found in that He acts 

* e.g. Isa. vi. 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 23 

ceaselessly in the world to secure fuller effect for righteous- 
ness in the hearts and fortunes of men. It is involved in this, 
that He is onmipoteiit and omniscient, as well as holy, and that 
He is the Creator and Sustainer of the world that thus serves 
His ends. The truth that He is all this becomes manifest in 
what He is doing in the world. Eeason and conscience in man 
are at once awakened, educated, and satisfied by this unfolding 
of the character, attributes, and relationship of God. The 
all-holy God, whose purposes are being wrought out in pro- 
ducing holiness in man, is manifest throughout the complex 
world as sovereign over the whole, and is so because He is its 
creative Source. 

4. Lastly, all this demands an ideal fulfillment which will 
ultimately bring the world, and its history, into complete 
accordance with spiritual and moral worth. 

The final proof that Jehovah is the true God lies in 
prophecy; in the revelation, being fulfilled stage by stage, 
of the processes and events by which the world will be 
brought into correspondence with the ideal, and man to the 
enjojmient of the perfect righteousness and blessedness which 
his nature demands. The living, inward presence of the 
prophetic word ever receiving fresh outward confirmations, 
is the convincing evidence to the prophets that their religion 
is true. 

Because of all this, the prophets denounce heathenism, whether 
within or without the borders of Israel, on three main grounds, 
namely, its wickedness, its irrationality, its unsatisfying vanity. 
To disbelieve the only true God comes from moral worthless- 
ness, folly, and frivolity. The writings of Amos, Hosea, and 
Isaiah afford abundant illustration of the connection of dis- 
belief of Jehovah with moral worthlessness. Isaiah xl-lxvi 
sets forth its irrationality, while Jeremiah, above all 
others, dwells upon its unsatisfying vanity.^ The same 
general attitude is taken both in the Psalms and in the Wisdom 
literature. 

Thus there grew up the general conception of Jehovah as 
being Himself true. By this was meant that it is His nature 
to reveal Himself with complete veracity, to do so by means 

1 See Jer. xvii. 12-17, U. 15-19. 



24 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of systematic and holy purpose throughout the world, and in 
such wise as to show Himself to be the absolute Eeality which 
explains all besides. It was implied also that the true God 
demands truth of men, because only so are they capable of 
receiving and setting forth the truth that is in Him. Such was 
the general view of God and of man, which was established as 
the result of the Old Testament Apologetic.^ 

II. The same causes which compelled the prophets of the Old 
Testament to make good the truth of their religion, operated in 
a far greater degree in the case of the apostles and teachers of 
early Christianity. 

In addition, there was the new spirit of individualism in 
religion, and also the new missionary activity, both of which are 
of the very essence of Christianity. Christianity is, and must 
always be, a great missionary enterprise for the conversion of 
individual men. The conversion of individuals involves, pri- 
marily, the persuasion of the heart and the awakening of the 
conscience. But it involves also the appeal to the reason, of 
which truth is the standard. Grounds had therefore to be given 
for the faith that Christianity was true. 

1. It was. as against the Jew that the Christian had, in 
the first instance, to prove the truth of his religion. It was 
out of Judaism that Christianity arose, and by reference, 
therefore, to Judaism that the original doctrine of Christ 
and the interpretation of Christ by His apostles were explained. 
Further, it was from Judaism that the first apostles and 
teachers sprang, and it was by Jewish opponents that their 
steps were dogged during the first generation of Christian 
advance. What was common to both Judaism and Chris- 
tianity marked out the necessary lines upon which the proof 
of the latter must proceed. The Old Testament, especially 
the prophetic writings with their Messianic predictions, were 
common ground to both Jew and Christian. The Jew ex- 
pected the fulfillment of these prophecies; the Christian 
claimed that they had been fulfilled. The whole object, 



1 Similar conditions calling for evidences, and the same features of the 
evidences supplied, are to be found, so far as the New Testament is concerned* 
in the Gospel of St. John. This is, however, treated subsequently as part of 
the content of Christianity (see Book II. chap. i.). 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 25 

therefore, of Christian Apologetic, from the Day of Pentecost 
till the controversy practically died out owing to the ascendency 
of Christianity, was to make good the facts of Christ's history 
and work, to show that these were -the fulfillment of prophecy, 
if not in all completeness, at least in promise and potency, and 
to turn aside the objections by which the Jews sought to over- 
throw this conclusion. 1 

2. But from the time that St. Paul turned from the Jews 
to the Gentiles, Christian missionaries came face to face with 
the established religions of Greece and Eome, and to some 
extent of the East. In claiming all men for the service of 
Christ, and in offering to all the infinite satisfaction of the 
gospel, the Christian teacher had to establish the superiority 
of Christianity over all other religions. He did this by a 
threefold process. In the first place, he exposed the 
irrationality and denounced the immorality of the prevailing 
religions, though hardly with greater intensity than had been 
used by the more spiritual philosophers themselves. He went 
on, in the next place, to exhibit the rationality and the moral 
power of the gospel he preached; to show how its doctrine of 
God and of Christ satisfied the reason and conscience which 
heathenism had outraged. Finally, if he were sufficiently broad 
and sympathetic, he went on to set forth how the higher elements 
of thought and practice, which were enshrined in the myths and 
legends of Paganism, were shadows of the fuller and nobler 
reality of Christ. 

3. In this conflict, the Christian teacher was led to deal with 
multitudes in the great cities of the Empire, who lived accord- 
ing to the popular interpretation of Epicureanism, and, if they 
philosophized at all, accepted the Epicurean doctrine of God 
and view of human life. ,Eor these all religion was a plaything 
of outward observances, if they were merely indifferent; a 
thing to be hated and put away if they were of intenser 
temperament. 

The doctrine which unfolded the superiority of the Chris- 
tian gospel in presence of ordinary Paganism became an 
appeal to the inextinguishable needs of the human heart in 
dealing with the moral skepticism and self-indulgence which 

1 Justin, Against Trypho, etc. 



26 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

were the natural outcome in popular life of Epicureanism in 
formal thought. 

Such were the inevitable tasks of Christianity in the first ages 
of its progress. 

4. At an earlier stage another task had to be undertaken. 
Christianity became sufficiently well known to be confronted 
with public opinion, and ultimately to attract the attention of 
rulers. Its teaching and practices, above all its spirit, were 
the subject of frequent misunderstanding and of caricature, 
to say nothing of the calumnies which were industriously 
propagated by the Jews. It had to clear itself from all these 
misunderstandings and calumnies if it was to live. As it 
cleared itself, it was enabled to appeal to and satisfy the 
spirit of earnest inquiry, which was awakened here and there 
into its real meaning and aims. Especially it had to justify 
both to rulers and to people that exclusive spirit which was 
so contrary to the tolerant policy of the Eoman Empire, and 
to the prevailing religious indifference of its people. Why 
could not Christians live and let live according to the general 
policy of the Eoman Empire? Why must they be so stub- 
bornly obstinate in refusing the slightest and most momentary 
compliance with those observances of the State religion, 
which were an indispensable cement to the social structure 
as it then existed? They had to present their apologia for 
this exclusive spirit, so alarming to the authorities, and 
they could found it upon nothing else than the exclusive 
truth of their religion and the exclusive right of truth to be 
obeyed. 

5. As Christian teachers endeavored to fulfill their great 
undertaking, they necessarily became thinkers. As they 
succeeded they were gradually recruited from the ranks of 
thinkers. Thus they were brought into growingly sympa- 
thetic relations with the nobler philosophy of the times, 
especially with Platonism and Stoicism in their most recent 
forms. The loftier minds of the times sought, in one or other 
of these philosophies, the explanation of the universe and of 
human life. They were, for those who held them, the highest 
truth, the standard by which all else was judged. There were 
elements in them which profoundly appealed to the Christian 



GENEBAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 27 

mind, as affording a support and a form to its doctrine,^ and 
as being congenial to many of its spiritual ideals. Moreover, 
there was this common ground between Christians and philos- 
ophers, that both set before themselves the attainment of truth 
as the end, in the former case of faith, in the latter of specula- 
tion. Christianity must needs meet the test which such 
philosophy applied to it, and must show its superiority both in 
respect of truth and as a source of spiritual and moral satisfac- 
tion. It was implied in the proof of the latter that satisfying 
power is one of the credentials of the truth. 

In his polemic against the popular religion the Christian 
apologist boldly claimed the alliance of the philosopher. Both 
occupied a common position in their opposition, if not to 
popular observances, at least to popular beliefs. But the 
essential contention of Christian teachers was that they 
possessed the whole, of which philosophy was not even a 
complete foundation, but only a fragmentary part.^ To 
the highest teaching of Plato or of the Stoics was opposed 
the Old Testament doctrine of God in the glory of His per- 
sonality, in the fullness of His attributes, in His living self- 
revelation in and through a divine activity directed to 
supreme spiritual and ethical ends. They added the facts of 
the life and teaching of Christ as fulfilling the revelation of 
God contained in the Old Testament, as embodying the 
highest reason, and bringing a complete satisfaction and 
salvation to the human heart. They went further, and 
showed how the place of Christ in the universe answered to 
and could be expressed in terms of the highest conceptions of 
philosophical thought. They endeavored to supply the 
element which was lacking in the most spiritual philosophy, 
the assurance of a personal and condescending God, who 
satisfies the infinite craving of the human heart with the gift 
of Himself. 

In this work the evidence of prophecy was peculiarly 
important. Exhaustive efforts were made to show how the 
prophecies of the Old Testament had been fulfilled in Christ. 



1 Especially in regard to the Logos. 

2 See Justin, Address to the Greeks, in which, he claims that Plato's doctrine 
was derived from Moses. 



28 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

It was made clear that the foreknowledge shown in them 
was as much beyond unaided human thought as the fulfill- 
ment was beyond unaided human power. Herein, therefore, 
was a clear proof that the living God had communicated 
beforehand to the prophets the secrets of the history which 
He Himself was working out. This evidence met the needs 
of the Christian case as against both the Jew and the 
philosopher. The Jew believed in the prophecies and needed the 
proof that they had been fulfilled. The philosopher believed in 
a divine first principle, but had no conception of the mani- 
festation, in an unfolding history, of the living God to the spirits 
of men. 

Hence the evidence of prophecy was insisted upon more 
strongly than even that of miracles, with the exception of 
the miracle of the Resurrection, which was necessary to the 
existence and manifestation of the kingdom of Christ. This 
preference may partly be accounted for by the fact that the 
prevalent practices of thaumaturgy rendered the support of 
miracles a somewhat doubtful gain. But, still more, the 
revelation beforehand by God of His purposes to mankind 
manifested more completely the glory of His condescending 
and consistent personality, than the mere occurrence of 
miracles. And it was the fact of this holy and gracious 
personality that had, above all, to be brought home to the 
philosophers. 

6. As Christianity advanced, not only in outward develop- 
ment, but in inward fullness of life, there grew up, at least in 
the intellectual atmosphere of Alexandria, the need and power 
of reflection upon its inner principles and meaning. The 
truth revealed in Christ must for believers fulfill and re- 
place philosophy, so that by it, God, Christ, mankind, and the 
world could be explained in their mutual relations. It was 
inevitable that such a Christian philosophy should absorb the 
congenial elements of the philosophy of the past, but should 
transcend them, becoming a new thing. All this was possible 
only where many tendencies met, as was the case in a great 
world-center like Alexandria, and where the intellectual 
atmosphere was created by the reflective and sympathetic 
mind of the Greeks. Under such influences, Christianity 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 29 

was accepted as a living system of world-explaining truth; 
not now in order to make good this position against the 
outside world so much as to satisfy the rational needs of its own 
adherents. For men of thoughtful temperament, salvation in 
Christ was incomplete without such rational satisfaction. The 
unique power of Christianity to supply such satisfaction was the 
final evidence of its truth. 

Origen furnishes in some respects the most perfect example 
of this newer type of Christian evidences, as he does of the 
ordinary controversial type. In his work Against Celsus 
he goes over with untiring thoroughness all the objections, 
philosophical, critical, historical, or ethical, which Celsus had 
raked together from all sources against the history, character, 
and claims of Christ, or against the temper, objects, and 
methods of the Christian Church. The work is a complete 
reservoir, containing the whole case against Christianity as 
then presented, together with the answer made by the most 
original and gifted of early Christian thinkers. On the 
other hand, Origen's work, Concerning First Principles, 
exhibits his own view of Christianity as the only satisfying 
world-philosophy, and as more than this, since it encloses a 
world-philosophy in the divine revelation and fulfillment of a 
universally redemptive and consummating end in Christ. 
This latter book may be taken as a continuation of the great 
works of Clement of Alexandria, whose temper is still more 
profound and spiritual. Together they mark the last utterances 
of Christian wisdom before the attention of the Church was 
diverted by far-reaching controversies, first as to the divinity 
and nature of Christ; then as to the nature, condition, and 
redemption of man. 

III. With the general acceptance of Christianity throughout 
the Eoman Empire, a new phase of the history of Christian 
Evidences is reached. 

In one sense they no longer continue to exist, for nominally 
there is no longer an external world to convert. The dogmas 
of the Church now pass unquestioned, and supply both 
guidance to thought and direction to practical life. But the 
motives that prompt to philosophy could not be suppressed, 
nor could the field which had been occupied by philosophy 



30 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

be overlooked. Further, although for centuries the remains 
of Greek thought only reached the great thinkers by indirect 
channels — through the works of Augustine, of the Pseudo- 
Dionysius, and of Boethius — yet these works were steeped 
in Platonic thought, and exhibited that aflSnity between 
Plato and the New Testament which has been perceived and 
utilized by all the more philosophic of the Church Fathers. 
For these reasons the period known as the Scholastic Period 
is the time when the great thinkers of the Church combined 
a childlike reception of its scheme of doctrines with a ceaseless 
endeavor to show that they contained within them a com- 
plete explanation of the world, and gave, therefore, full 
satisfaction to the demands of reason. Reason, indeed, was 
not even an objector or a critic; it was the faithful ally of 
ecclesiastical authority, because the source alike of reason and 
of authority was seen to be the same. During this period, 
therefore, Christianity is not established as true against those 
who were without, but its truth is made manifest in furnishing 
a complete and consistent world-explanation, in terms of the 
reigning spiritual philosophy, and, therefore, as confirmed by 
that philosophy. 

The transition to this point of view is to be found in 
the writings of Augustine, not to mention the Alexandrian 
teachers, Clement and Origen, who exercised no direct in- 
fluence over Western thought. On the one hand, there is to be 
found in Augustine's De Civitate Dei a polemic against Pagan 
religion, its principles and practices, such as was carried on 
by the earlier apologists. But on the other, the work proceeds 
to set forth a philosophy of history, which is steeped in 
Platonic influences, while entirely based upon the teaching 
and history of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. 
Still more, Augustine's De Trinitate, while more distinctly 
religious in its motive and less formally philosophic than the 
works of the Schoolmen, is yet a foreshadowing of, and 
supplies material for, their dealing with the dogmas of the 
Church. 

The great aim of the earlier or Platonic Schoolmen was 
to show that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the highest 
dogma of Christianity, is the necessary explanation of the 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 31 

divine nature and also of the creation and redemption of 
the world. If the treatment of the subject is unduly abstract 
and psychological/ at least the earlier Schoolmen avoid the 
mistake made by later theology of holding the doctrines of 
the Trinity and of Creation in such isolation from one 
another that neither throws light upon the other. Hence they 
succeed in finding the basis of redemption in the essential 
relations of the Godhead to creation and to the life of man 
as naturally constituted. In this respect Anselm, however, 
is disappointing. The associations of feudal sovereignty 
cause him to abandon in the Cur Deus Homo the vantage- 
ground he gained in the Proslogion for explaining the 
Atonement. 

The separation between the doctrines of the Godhead 
and of Creation, on the one hand, and between the natural 
constitution of the world and redemption on the other, was 
brought about, when in the time of the later Schoolmen, 
Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, the influence of Plato 
and the Stoics was superseded by that of Aristotle. The 
fundamental intellectual aim remained the same, but dis- 
tinctions were now introduced which prevented it from being 
carried out with anything like the thoroughness of the earlier 
Schoolmen. The strictly evidential purpose again assumes 
promiaence ia presence of the growing and sometimes daring 
skepticism becomiQg manifest in the great seats of learning, 
notably in Paris. Two main distinctions have affected the 
whole course of Christian Evidences down to the present 
day, as will shortly become clear. These are the distinction 
between Natural and Eevealed religion, and that between 
the province of Reason and that of Faith. The doctrine of 
the Holy Trinity, expressed in a form largely derived from 
Plato, the Stoics, and the psychology of Augustine, had been, 
as has been said, the key with the earlier Schoolmen to the 
doctrine of Creation. Henceforth this position was abandoned. 
The world, considered as natural, was explained according to 
the mediaeval imderstanding of the metaphysics of Aristotle. 
It was the result of a divine First Cause, who, as Prime 
Mover, Himself unmoved, had set all things in motion, as 

1 Derived from Augustine. 



32 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Designer had contrived them, and as Supreme Will had 
ordained their existing order. Eeason had, in the Gentile 
world, discerned this truth, unaided by revelation. Revelation 
had delivered it with accordant voice to the Hebrew race, 
and had, therefore, confirmed it to all who accepted the 
authority of the Old Testament. Hence for this part of 
Christian truth Eeason might be the discoverer, though 
Eevelation was the authenticator of the discovery when 
made. But redemption and the perfecting of natural life 
by grace, while they gave occasion for a fuller and higher 
revelation of the Godhead, were made known, not to reason, 
but to faith. By this it was meant that this higher truth 
was revealed to, and authenticated by, an ecclesiastical 
authority, which defined its meaning and imposed its accept- 
ance upon faith. The evidence which authenticated it was 
not to be found in the power of spiritual insight to discover 
in it the working of the same divine Eeason, which had 
already been found to be the explanation of the natural 
world. Its proof lay in the fact that, above and outside the 
natural order, miracles had been wrought both to confirm 
the truth and to accredit the authority which interpreted it. 
On the faith of the miracles, therefore, the claim of the 
authority was admitted, and on the declaration of the 
authority a system of dogmas was received, which was 
beyond the range of reason not only to discover, but even 
to verify, apart from miraculous attestation; although, no 
doubt, it could subsequently be shown not to be contrary 
to reason. Hence the reality of the divine facts became 
subordinate to the system of dogmas which could be extracted 
from them. And the facts were important just in so far as, 
being miraculous, they stood outside the natural order; not 
as being contained within and as consummating that order. 
The whole realm of specifically Christian truth was placed 
outside the order and inner reason of the world. It was 
indeed accidental; brought about as an external remedy for 
the accidental happening of sin. The remedy thus introduced 
could be seen — at least so the Thomists taught — to be the 
most reasonable that could be imagined. Still it was an 
artificial device to repair an accidental Fall, and the means 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 33 

b}' which restoration was brought about stood in no vital 
relation to that essential life of the world, from which sin 
is a perverse departure. Proof of the truth of Christianity 
was, therefore, strictly speaking, limited to proof of the 
natural theology, which was common both to Christianity 
and to Greek philosophy. The only proof of which specifically 
Christian doctrine was capable was the proof of the authenti- 
cating facts, and of the rightful claims of the authenticating 
authority to interpret them; except that it could further be 
shown that there was nothing involved, to which reason could 
properly object. 

A further step was taken, however, by the Scotist philo- 
sophers and by the Nominalists. To begin with ecclesiastical 
authority had been recognized as uttering in complete form 
the voice of reason. Later on that authority had at least 
acknowledged Season, divine and human, and had arranged 
a partition of provinces and functions with Eeason. But by 
the Scotists Eeason, not only in men, but in the universe, was 
set aside. All things might have been ordained differently 
by God. His bare will determined them, for no reason that 
could be discovered, save that He so willed them. And what 
He had willed could only be known by the authoritative 
declaration of the Church. The dogmatic faith remained, its 
declarations being unquestioned, but Eeason — as in God 
selecting the highest ends, and as in man discovering them — 
was swept away. To explain the world as a consistently 
rational system became impossible. God was bare Will, and 
the world that proceeded from Him was, with all its events, 
the product of bare will. Christianity was declared, not 
proved, to be true. It was true as an actual occurrence ; not as 
the foundation and the climax of a reasonable and truly spiritual 
order. 

IV. It was in such a state of thought that the Eenaissance 
took place. 

In addition to the unwelcome limitations imposed upon 
Eeason by the Thomists, and to the skepticism encouraged by 
the Scotists and Nominalists, the ecclesiastical theory of life 
destroyed the worth of the present for the sake of the future 
life, and set up asceticism as the highest ideal of life. The 



34 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

Kenaissance was the effect of two causes, the recovery of 
the old learning, and the revolt of human nature against the 
unnatural philosophy and practice of life predominant in 
the Church. The revival of the past was attractive, largely 
because it justified and glorified the breach with the present. 
Men awoke from the nightmare of ecclesiasticism to discover 
a world of frank and poetic naturalism, that not only conceded 
the legitimacy but fostered the indulgence of all the natural 
tastes and appetites which the Church restrained or condemned. 
The old civilization had treated the world in which men actually 
live as alone real and substantial. Such a view accorded well 
with the demands of the ordinary passions and ambitions of 
worldly men. Moreover, men stood at the dawn of a new era, 
when the discovery of new continents awakened a new sense 
of freshness and vastness in human life. Trading communi- 
ties also were springing up, and under the influence of trade 
practical scientific interests were awakening. Practical life 
could not be reconciled with the current ecclesiastical ideals. 
It seemed desirable, therefore, to throw over the incubus of 
Christianity; frankly to recognize the present and earthly 
as the real. The spirit of pagan religion, which glorified the 
present and rested upon a worldly theory of life, must 
be restored, in order that men might pursue unrestrained, on 
the one hand, the enjoyment of life, and, on the other, its 
practical concerns. 

The Eenaissance, therefore, represents essentially a rediscov- 
ered faith in the worth of this life, the davm of practical and 
scientific interests and methods, and the reaction against the 
aesthetic ideals which had been set forth as representing Chris- 
tianity. It took place at a time when the moral life of humanity 
was low, and when life, especially in the cities of Italy, had 
become indescribably corrupt. Hence it was disfigured here and 
there by a complete revolt, in both theory and practice, from all 
ethical standards of life. 

It was the conjoint influence of authoritative religion, 
emptied alike of rationality and of spiritual endeavor, and of 
revived Paganism, with its unnatural return to a naturalism 
that, under these conditions, could only be bestial, that neces- 
eitated and occasioned the Eeformation. The circumstances 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 35 

determined the evidential task of the Eeformation. It lay, 
not in argument or in a completer philosophy, but in the 
renewed utterance of the inextinguishable longings of the 
human heart for something higher and more divine than 
either external religion or an earthly paradise. Its minis- 
tering to that demand lay in the experience and proclamation 
by Luther of a gospel which found in Christ at once the 
satisfaction of the deepest needs and the warrant of the law- 
fulness and worth of a natural life, ethically conducted. Of 
formal arguments, proving once more the truth of assailed doc- 
trines or the reality of spiritual objects, there is none in Luther. 
Yet his message, and that of other typical Eef ormers, being the 
utterance of men possessed by the presence of God, reestablished 
the truth of Christianity by awakening the heart to find in it the 
only true satisfaction and inspiration of life. In this respect 
the influence of the Eeformers was almost as powerful over the 
Eoman Catholicism they abandoned as on the Protestantism 
they created. 

V. With the advent of Protestantism and the organization 
of Protestant Churches, each having its own articles of asso- 
ciation, came for the first time the necessity of defining and 
proving in controversy particular doctrines and systems of 
doctrine. 

The Church had often been plunged into controversy with 
heretics in the early ages, but for a thousand years one system 
of doctrine had reigned practically unquestioned in Western 
Christianity. The divisions of the Eeformation set all parties 
elaborating and defining the systems of doctrine by which the 
faith of each was to be distinguished. The Lutheran, the 
Eeformed, the Anglican Churches, on the Protestant side; 
the Eoman Church, by means of the Council of Trent, on the 
other, occupied themselves thus. In contrast with them all 
was the Eacovian Catechism of those who acknowledged the 
leadership of the older and the younger Socinus. Christian 
Evidences, as such, were hardly called for, and certainly did 
not flourish during this period. The whole energy of each 
Christian community was concentrated on defining its position 
relative to that of others, to finding conclusive evidence in 
Holy Scripture for its system of doctrines, and to controverting 



36 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the distinctive tenets of the rest. Such ceaseless controversy 
between the various Christian bodies and within them must 
needs have led to a general weakening of the authority of 
Christian doctrine, as a whole, in the case of those who stood 
outside the immediate interest of the discussions. While 
controversy led to the upbuilding of distinctive systems of 
Christian thought, it opened the way for a spirit which 
set aside the dogmas of the Churches altogether. This un- 
doubtedly was one of the contributory causes to the rise 
of Deism. 

VI. The history of Christian Evidences proper again becomes 
important with the Deistic controversy of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. 

That controversy arose in England, and represents a type of 
thought distinctly English. But it spread to France, and even- 
tually, in the lUuminationist movement, to Germany. To under- 
stand Deism it is necessary to start with the philosophical 
writings of Francis Bacon, and to take account of the influence 
of John Locke. 

On the Continent the transition from ancient to modern 
thought was made by Des Cartes. The starting-point of 
his philosophy was the testimony of individual consciousness, 
as enunciated in his celebrated thesis, "I think; therefore I 
am.'^ By the adoption of this basis he swept away the whole 
structure of Greek metaphysics, in order to build up a new 
system, not from speculation as to the general relations in the 
universe between mind and matter, or between reason and 
sense, but from investigation into what is contained in the 
individual experience of thinking. It is impossible to question 
the validity of the affirmation, "I think; therefore I am." 
For to doubt is itself an exercise of thought, and carries with 
it belief in the existence of the Self, which doubts. On this 
basis Des Cartes set up once more, on the testimony of 
individual consciousness, a spiritual philosophy, which included 
the belief in the existence of God as derived from the innate 
and necessary idea of God. He thus found the justification 
of Anselm's ontological proof of the existence of God in the 1 
content of human consciousness itself. The consciousness of m, 
the finite carries with it, as its correlative, the consciousness 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 37 

of the infinite, for finitude has no meaning except as contrasted 
with infinity. But not only is the idea of an Infinite Being 
given in finite consciousness, but of an infinitely perfect Being 
in contrast with the finite consciousness of imperfection. And 
this necessarily given idea is more than an idea. It represents 
the ultimate truth of things, and thus the thought of God 
carries in itself the proof of His existence. Hence the old con- 
clusion was securely established upon the modern basis of an 
individualist philosophy. 

But in England the transition to the modern point of 
view was made, not through a philosophical transformation, but, 
in accordance with the practical temper of the race, by the 
growth of scientific modes of thought. The inaugurator of 
the change was Francis Bacon, by his great work on The 
Dignity and Advancement of Learning and by his Novum 
Organum. Bacon set himself to sweep away the old abstract 
conceptions of the universe, whether based on theological or 
on metaphysical doctrines, and to substitute for speculation 
the method of inductive investigation of the phenomena of 
the external world, so as to build up by careful experimental 
inquiry a body of actually ascertained truth. He attempted 
to set out the conditions on which such a task can be fulfilleid 
and to expose the various "idols^^ of the imagination, which 
lead men to substitute fictions of their own for the true 
scientific explanation of the real facts of the universe. The 
predominance given to the world of sense-experience and to 
the methods of investigation which are applicable to that 
experience, taken alone would inevitably tend to throw into 
the shade aU other realms of reality, and all other means 
of attaining to truth. But, in addition, the distinction which 
had passed current since the time of Thomas Aquinas between 
natural and revealed religion, between reason and faith, 
began now to manifest its consequences. Revelation was 
formally recognized by Bacon, but politely bowed out of the 
world of ascertained knowledge. Two quotations will make 
this clear. In dealing with natural theology, which ^^may be 
justly called divine philosophy,'^ Bacon says, ^Divine philosophy 
is a science, or rather the rudiments of a science, derivable 
from God by the light of nature, and the contemplation of His 



38 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

creatures; so that with regard to its object, it is truly divine; 
but with regard to its acquirement, natural. The bounds of 
this knowledge extend to the confutation of atheism, and the 
ascertaining the laws of nature, but not to the establishing of 
religion. And, therefore, God never wrought a miracle to 
convert an atheist, because the light of nature is sufficient to 
demonstrate a deity; but miracles were designed for the 
conversion of the idolatrous and superstitious, who acknowl- 
edged a God, but erred in their worship of Him — the light of 
nature being unable to declare the will of God or assign the 
Just forms of worshiping Him. For as the power and skill 
of a workman are seen in his works, but not his person, so 
the works of God express the wisdom and omnipotence of the 
Creator without the least representation of His image. . . . 
And, therefore, the being of a God, that He governs the world, 
that He is all-powerful, wise, precient, good, a just rewarder 
and punisher, and to be adored, may be shown and enforced from 
His works, and many other wonderful secrets, with regard to 
His attributes, and much more as to His dispensation and gov- 
ernment over the universe may also be solidly deduced, and made 
appear from the same. And this subject has been usefully 
treated by several. 

*^But from the contemplation of nature, and the principles 
of human reason, to dispute or urge anything with vehemence, 
as to the mysteries of faith, or over-curiously to examine and 
sift them, by prying into the manner of the mystery, is no 
safe thing : ^Give unto faith the things that are faith's' . . . 
so that it is a vain attempt to draw down the sublime mysteries 
of religion to our reason, but we should rather raise our minds 
to the adorable throne of heavenly truth. And in this part of 
natural theology we find rather an excess than any defect; 
whither we have now, however, turned a little aside to note, on 
account of the extreme prejudice and danger which both religion 
and philosophy hence incur, because a mixture of these makes 
both an heretical religion and a fantastic and superstitious 
philosophy."^ 

In dealing with the relations between reason and faith. 
Bacon lays down, "The prerogative of God extends over the 

> Advancement of Learning, Book III. chap. ii. 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 39 

whole man, and reaches both to his will and his reason ; so that 
man must absolutely renounce himself, and submit to God: 
and therefore, as we are obliged to obey the divine law, though 
our will murmur against it, so are we obliged to believe the 
Word of God, though our reason be shocked at it. For if we 
should believe only such things as are agreeable to our reason, 
we assent to the matter, and not to the author: which is no 
more than we do to a suspected witness. . . . And, there- 
fore, the more absurd and incredible any divine mystery is, the 
greater honor we do to God in believing it; and so much the 
more noble the victory of faith." ^ 

Here, then, is the conclusion of the matter. A real world is 
set up for scientific experiment, which can only be considered 
as the work of an intelligent Designer, whose attributes are 
manifest in His work, but not His Person. On the other hand, 
there is revelation, which has its own methods of establishing 
itself, but appeals to faith and not to reason. Faith is the 
more perfect the more independent it is of rational grounds 
of belief. The truths of religion, therefore, as distinguished 
from the general explanation of the world as the product of 
design, are incapable of ^roof and set entirely beyond the bounds 
of reason. 

The second influence which it is necessary to take account 
of is that of Locke, in many respects the typical representative 
of English philosophy. The outstanding metaphysical con- 
troversy in his time was as to whether human knowledge is, 
or is not, to be explained by the presence of innate ideas. 
The great continental philosophers, Des Cartes and his 
successors, held that knowledge cannot be explained without 
innate ideas, which belong to the mind as part of its original 
outfit, independent of and before all possible sense-experience. 
Sense-experience, they held, could not give either the 
universality or the necessity which belongs to many of our 
judgments. Locke, on the other hand, set himself to destroy 
the doctrine of innate ideas, laying down the principle that 
there is nothing in the intellect which has not first been 
given in sense-experience. The mind of each individual is 
originally a tabula rasa; sensation is the only source of 

1 Advancement of Learning ^ Book IX. 



40 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

knowledge, and knowledge results from sensation by the processes 
of reflection. 

But in this sense-limited world Locke is confronted with 
the presence of religion, and in what he has to say, how- 
ever theoretically unsatisfactory, his perfect good faith is 
undoubted. 

Locke devotes the 18th chapter of the Fourth Book of 
his Essay Concerning Human Understanding to the subject 
of "Faith and Eeason, and their Distinct Provinces.'^ He 
starts by laying down that "till it be resolved how far we 
are to be guided by reason, and how far by faith, we shall 
in vain dispute and endeavor to convince one another in 
matters of religion." Proceeding to give his own explana- 
tion of the matter, he says, "Eeason therefore here, as contra- 
distinguished to faith, I take to be the discovery of the 
certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which 
the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which 
it has got by the use of its natural faculties, namely, by sensation 
or reflection. Faith, on the other side, is the assent to any 
proposition not thus made out by the deductions of reason; 
but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in 
some extraordinary way of communication. This way of 
discovering truths to men we call revelation.'^ He then 
proceeds to lay down that "no man inspired by God can by 
any revelation communicate to others any new simple ideas, 
which they had not before from sensation or reflection"; that 
'Vhatsoever truth we come to the clear discovery of, from 
the knowledge and contemplation of our own ideas, will 
always be certainer to us, than those which are conveyed to 
us by traditional revelation"; and that "no proposition can be 
received for divine revelation, or obtain the assent due to all 
such, if it be contradictory to our clear intuitive knowledge, 
still less if the revelation be traditional and not immediate 
and original." There are, however, "many things wherein we 
have very imperfect notions, or none at all; and other things, 
of whose past, present, or future existence, by the natural 
use of our faculties, we can have no knowledge at all; these, 
as being beyond the discovery of our natural faculties, and 
above reason, are, when revealed, the proper matter of faith." 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 41 

^'Whatever proposition is revealed, of whose truth our mind 
by its natural faculties and notions cannot judge, that is purely 
matter of faith, and above reason; and where the principles 
of reason have not evidenced a proposition to be certainly 
true or false, there clear revelation, as another principle of 
truth and ground of assent, may determine/' Finally, "there 
can be no evidence that any traditional revelation is of divine 
original in the words we receive it, and in the sense we under- 
stand it, so clear and so certain, as that of the principle of reason ; 
and therefore nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, 
the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be 
urged, or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath 
nothing to do." 

Locke, in effect, fences round the world of knowledge, as 
derived exclusively from sense by the processes of reflection, 
from the world of revelation given to faith. The only 
realm in which faith is to reign is that wherein knowledge, 
which belongs to reason, is impossible or defective. There the 
propositions communicated by revelation (for revelation deals 
entirely with propositions) must be accepted, if they do not 
contradict reason; but they must be held by faith, which is 
a faculty entirely separate from reason, though subject to its 
criticism. 

The present concern is not to criticise this view, but to 
show how Locke cooperated with Bacon to prepare the way 
for the Deists. Passing by the fact that the general view of 
the relation of God to the universe and to man is in both 
cases that of deistic apartness, both Bacon and Locke, in 
assigning a function for revelation and faith, make clear that 
the propositions embodied in revelation and accepted by faith 
cannot lay claim to be treated as knowledge. They are to be 
held indeed, but on groimds of inferior certitude to those of 
sense-experience. 

The result of such explanations was to place revelation 
and supernatural religion generally in such a precarious 
position as to invite attack. And this attack was delivered 
by the Deists. Accepting just so much of religion as Bacon 
declared could be justified by natural philosophy, they threw 
over both revelation and faith. Many of them went so far 



42 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

in rejecting religious beliefs as to deny the immortality of the 
soul, but they retained belief in God as being necessar}^, and, 
in so far as necessary, to account for the origin and order of the 
world. 

Without entering into minor details, this explanation is 
sufficient for the understanding of the new task set to Christian 
Evidences. In particular it gives the key to the greatest work 
which the controversy produced, namely. The Analogy of 
Religion, by Bishop Butler; dealing in the first part with 
natural, and in the second with revealed religion. 

The task which Butler set himself so far as natural 
religion is concerned, was, assuming the conclusions of the 
Deists "as to the constitution and course of nature," to show 
that on the same principles belief in a future life, in the 
government of God by rewards and punishments, in the moral 
government of God, and in a state of probation, might be 
justified. The same reasons as were urged on behalf of the 
narrower, justified the fuller faith, and no greater difficulties 
beset it. The matter is thus stated by Butler in his Intro- 
duction: "Let us compare the known constitution and course 
of things with what is said to be the moral system of Nature; 
the acknowledged dispensations of Providence, or that govern- 
ment which we find ourselves under, with what religion 
teaches us to believe and expect; and see whether they are 
not analogous and of a piece. And upon such a comparison 
it will, I think, be found that they are very much so; that 
both may be traced up to the same general laws, and resolved 
into the same priuciples of divine conduct." The difficulties 
which in Butler's mind were incidental to the system of the 
world were resolved by the consideration that the "govern- 
ment of God considered as a scheme or constitution" is and 
must be "imperfectly comprehended." As finite creatures in 
an infinitejy complex world, men cannot expect to under- 
stand all parts of it. Life, therefore, cannot fail to present 
difficulties, which are at present insurmountable by our reason. 
In this way natural religion, involving the existence of a 
moral Governor, who is concerned to train character by the 
combined means of rewards and punishments, and who, owing 
to the immortality of the soul, has unlimited time in which 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 43 

to work out His purposes, is established, as being in the highest 
degree reasonable, on grounds common to the Deists. 

From this conclusion, reached in the first part, Butler 
proceeds to deal with revealed religion in the second. Here 
he attempts to show by similar reasoning that the essential 
features of revealed religion are foreshadowed in the 
ordinary course of nature. Three main objections to Eevela- 
tion are dealt with by Butler: firstly, that it is believed to 
be miraculous; secondly, that it involves faith in a Mediator; 
and thirdly, that there is only partial knowledge and belief 
of it. His observation of the course of nature shows Butler 
something in it analogous to all these features of revelation. 
The origin of the world, for example, demands, according to 
Butler, a kind of forthputting of the divine power differing 
from that which is involved in maintaining it. Moreover, 
fresh methods of divine working become manifest in the 
world, from time to time, and each is, in a measure, miraculous 
in relation to that which went before. Similarly, there are 
instances of mediatorial action and of vicarious suffering 
throughout the whole course of human life. And, finally, almost 
all knowledge, and many of the highest goods of life, are pos- 
sessed by comparatively few; the knowledge and enjoyment of 
them can only gradually, if ever, become the portion of all men. 
Once more, the principle is invoked, by the aid of which Butler 
accomplished so much, that the whole system of the world is a 
scheme at present imperfectly comprehended. Thus, in the 
case of revealed religion, Butler succeeds, as he had done in that 
of natural religion, in showing that there is no more difficulty 
of belief than exists in regard to the natural Theism which 
the Deists expounded. Probably, nowadays, every one would 
agree with Butler that to travel as far as the Deists, is to be 
compelled by the necessities of thought ultimately to go the 
whole course. 

The seventh chapter of the second part of the Analogy treats 
"of the particular evidence for Christianity,'^ "dealing with the 
evidence of miracles and the marks which establish the trust- 
worthiness of the testimony to them, with prophecy, and with 
collateral evidence, which, taken as a whole, supplies a cumula- 
tive proof of the truth of Christianity.'' 



44 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

The ordinary course of Christian Evidences in Great 
Britain from the time of Butler has followed pretty closely 
the lines which have already been traced. It will be neces- 
sary shortly to offer some criticism of Paley, who may be 
treated as the typical English writer on this subject. Mean- 
while, it is sufficient to note that the distinction between 
natural and revealed religion has been maintained through- 
out, and that the chief stress has been laid upon the argument 
from design, so far as the existence of God is concerned, 
though not to the exclusion of the evidence of the existence 
of a moral Governor afforded by the testimony of moral 
consciousness. Kevealed religion has not, for the most part, 
at least till recently, been treated in as close a connection with 
the ordinary course of human life as was done by Butler in 
the second part of the Analogy. Stress has generally been 
laid upon its confirmation by the miracles of the gospel, and 
upon establishing the trustworthiness of the witnesses of 
them. Many special lines of evidence have been followed 
in recent times. "Works have been written in support of the 
belief in miracles on philosophical grounds, dealing with the 
moral and other difficulties of Christianity, and so forth. But 
the main lines followed have, almost up to the present, been those 
which have Just been explained. 

yil. A much more far-reaching question was opened up 
by the critical philosophy of Kant. The philosophy of Kant 
can only be understood in relation to that of David Hume. 
It was Hume who '^first interrupted" Kant's "dogmatic 
slumber" and gave his "investigation in the field of specu- 
lative philosophy quite a new direction."^ As has already 
been pointed out, the great problem with philosophers from 
the time of Des Cartes was to explain the universality and 
necessity of certain of our judgments. How can universality 
and necessity be predicated of certain propositions, which, 
so far as actual experience goes, are only established by very 
limited observation? Hume fastened upon one of these 
judgments, the proposition that "every event must have a 
cause." Metaphysicians before his time had, with the excep- 
tion of sensationists like Locke, fallen back upon the innate 

1 Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic (Introduction). 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 45 

idea of Causality as the explanation. Hume absolutely denied 
both the fact and the explanation. There is no such necessity 
given in thought, and there are no such innate ideas. A 
merely subjective necessity arising from custom has been, 
treated as an objective necessity of real knowledge. When we 
lay down that every event must have a cause, what we ought 
to mean is, in substance, that every event which takes place 
in time has had an antecedent, that, so far as our experience 
goes, particular events have always been preceded by particular 
antecedents, and that, therefore, customary association leads 
us to expect that the experience of the past will, in similar 
circumstances, be repeated in the future. Partly, therefore, by 
inevitable association, and partly for the practical guidance 
of life, we universalize our experience and treat it as neces- 
ssLTj. But in so far as this is done for theoretic, and not 
merely for practical purposes, our procedure goes beyond the 
evidence, and is invalid. It was to this explanation of the 
principle of causality that Kant's attention was particularly 
drawn. 

Two remarks should be added by the way. In the first 
place, as Hume dismissed the concept of Causalit}^, so he 
dismissed that of Substance. Berkeley's idealism had ex- 
plained away the substantial existence of matter. Hume 
completed the work by denying the substantial existence 
of mind. Secondly, it was by means of the same principle 
of customary association that Hume destroyed the proof of 
miracles. At first sight it might appear that to resolve the 
sense of necessity and universality, attaching to the concept 
of Causality, into a beneficial but unfounded illusion, made 
belief in miracles, which violate the supposed natural order of 
the world, easier. But Hume interposed between men and 
this conclusion in his celebrated Essay on Miracles. The 
current proof of Christianity depended almost entirely upon 
establishing the trustworthiness of the witnesses of the gos- 
pel miracles. Hume attacked this one stronghold of faith by 
arguing that, according to universal experience, it is more 
credible that testimony should be false than that miracles 
should be true. 'No amount of evidence, therefore, accord- 
ing to him, that in any particular instance the testimony was 



46 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

true and the miracle did actually take place, can be sufficient 
to break down this conclusion of the human mind, derived 
from general experience. The influence of this attack will 
be apparent when Paley's Emdences of Christianity are 
considered. 

Eeid and the Scottish school of philosophy replied to the gen- 
eral skepticism of Hume by an appeal to the "original constitu- 
tion of our nature" as made known by the common sense of 
mankind. The fundamental deliverances of human conscious- 
ness testified to the existence of a real Ego, of a real world 
external to and independent of the percipient, to the validity of 
the principle of causality, and so forth. Belief in all these things 
is part of the general outfit of mankind : to doubt them makes 
life impossible, and therefore they must be accepted as true on 
pain of reducing thought to imbecility. 

This appeal, as he understood the matter, to the common 
sense of uninstructed mankind, Kant was unable to admit. 
He set himself, therefore, to work out an independent solution 
of the problem raised by Hume. He found that men do pass 
certain judgments relating to objects in space and time, as 
being necessarily, and therefore universally, true, not only 
in advance of, but entirely apart from, sense-experience. 
The sciences of pure mathematics are conclusive evidence 
of this. In like manner, coming to pure physics, it appeared 
that the human mind treats the whole world as necessarily 
subject to laws, and this quite apart from proving by observa- 
tion and experiment that law is universal. It is clear that 
such a proof is beyond human power. Yet, notwithstanding 
this inability, the whole body of natural science is based upon 
the belief, not only that the subjection of all things to a 
uniform system of laws is true, but that it must necessarily 
be true. 

How can these facts be explained? How are pure 
mathematics and pure physics possible? In addition, how 
are metaphysics, and especially metaphysics as a science, 
possible? Kant's answer is practically that the mind is origi- 
nally constituted in three great departments. These are the 
Sensibility, with its forms of space and time; the Under- 
standing, with its categories; and the Reason, with its ideas. 



GEXERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 47 

All these are essential to our experience in its completeness. 
Their activity is awakened in order by the presentation to our 
sensibilit}^ of the non-ego, in itself unknown. 

To begin with, we cannot experience any object except as hav- 
ing a certain place in space, and as occurring at a particular 
period in a time-succession. But space and time are not in the 
objects perceived : they exist only in percipient minds. They are 
the necessary subjective conditions of our perception of the nou' 
ego. Therefore we can attain necessary truth in pure mathe- 
matics because they are entirely concerned with the forms of 
time and space. We can arrive at necessary judgments in the 
sphere of mathematics so long as we do not stray outside the 
necessary forms which condition our sense-experience; that is, 
so long as our judgments are kept consistent with the indispen- 
sable conditions laid down by the forms of space and time in 
themselves. 

In like manner, as to the possibility of pure a priori physics. 
The object which is presented to us under the forms of the sensi- 
bility, space and time, is at the next stage subsumed under the 
categories of the understanding. The so-called categories had 
been in use for the purpose of formal logic, since the time of 
Aristotle, who brought them together and gave them their pre- 
cise definition. Kant, after years of reflection, thought that he 
had '*been able to produce a complete list of these categories,^' or 
concepts of the understanding. He arranged a transcendental 
table of the pure concepts of the understanding, under the four 
heads of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality, as follows : — 

1. As to Quantity. 2. As to Quality. 
Unity (the Measure). Reality. 

Plurality (the Quantity). Negation. 

Totality (the Whole). Limitation. 

3. As to Relation. 4. As to Modality. 
Substance. Possibility. 

Cause. Existence. 

Community. Necessity. 

Again, necessary a priori knowledge is possible, so long as, 
in the case of pure physics, no attempt is made to travel 



48 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

beyond the content of these concepts, which are part of the 
original outfit of the mind, and therefore not dependent, save for 
their awakening into activity, upon sense-experience. 

But the functions of the sensibility and of the under- 
standing are not sufficient to explain knowledge as a whole. 
They would give us, indeed, knowledge of particular objects, 
but not of the world as a systematic whole. For that purpose 
the Eeason, with its ideas, is necessary. These ideas are 
three in number — the Psychological, the Cosmological, and the 
Theological; in other words, the ideas of self, of the world, of 
God. Experience is unified into what we know as the system 
of the universe by our necessary use of these three great 
ideas. 

But an all-important distinction is now made in respect of 
the ideas of the Eeason. Whereas theoretic knowledge is 
possible by means of the forms of the sensibility and the 
concepts of the Understanding, it is not so with the ideas of 
the Eeason. These latter have only a regulative, as opposed to 
a theoretic, validity. We can only explain the world as if * 
these ideas were true; but we can never prove that they are 
true, or discover what the reality corresponding to them is in 
itself. Kant takes each of them in succession and subjects 
it to criticism. He first of all dismisses the rational psychol- 
ogy of his time with its doctrines of the immateriality, the 
incorruptibility, the personality, and the spirituality of the 
soul. It is shown that we can "lay at the foundation of 
this science nothing but the simple and in itself perfectly 
contentless representation I, which cannot even be called a 
conception, but merely a consciousness which accompanies all I 
conceptions."^ It is contended that no science of the Ego 
in itself, as apart from the general texture of experience, can be 
attained to by means of the self-reference which accompanies 
all consciousness. Again, advancing to the Cosmological idea, 
Kant shows that contrary propositions can be advanced as 
to its nature, with equal assurance and with equally cogent 
proofs. Finally, coming to the Theological idea, Kant sur- 
veys in succession the so-called ontological, cosmological, and 

1 Critique of the Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic, Bk. II. chap, i: 
"Of the Paralogisms of the Pure Reason." 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 49 

physico-theological (design) arguments for the existence of God, 
and finds them all hopelessly insufficient. The ontological 
argument confuses existence as assumed in thought, with the 
existence in the sense of external reality. This is illustrated by 
the difference between the imagined and the real possession of a 
hundred thalers. 

The Cosmological argument, which urges that if something 
exists, an absolutely necessary being must likewise exist, is 
dismissed on various grounds. The most important of these 
is that, in so far as this proof is distinct from the ontological 
argument, it rests on the principle that '^everything that is 
contingent must have a cause — a principle without signifi- 
cance, except in the sensuous world. For,^' continues Kant, 
"the purely intellectual conception of the contingent cannot 
produce any sjoithetic proposition, like that of causality, 
which is itself without significance or distinguishing charac- 
teristic except in the phenomenal world. But in the present 
case it is employed to help us beyond the limits of its sphere.'^ ^ 
Once more, the physico-theological, or design argument, can 
at most only ^'demonstrate the existence of an Architect of 
the world, whose efforts are limited by the capabilities of the 
material with which he works; but not of a Creator of the 
world, to whom all things are subject.^^ Moreover, we can 
at best only reach by this means the existence of a cause propor^ 
tionate to the order and design visible in the universe, and not 
that of a perfect Being.2 

Are these ideas, then, to be rejected as valueless? By 
no means. Duly criticised and limited to regulative uses, they 
are necessary to the unification and explanation of our 
experience. As to the idea of God, Kant says, "The ex- 
pression suited to our feeble notions is, that we conceive the 
world as if it came, as to its existence and internal determina- 
tion, from a supreme reason, by which notion we both cognize 
the constitution which belongs to it (the world) itself, yet 
without pretending to determine the nature of its cause 
per se, and, on the other hand, we place the groimd of this 



1 Critiqite of the Pure Reawn, Transcendental Dialectic , Bk. II. chap, iii 
fifth section. 

» Ibid., sixth section. 



50 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

constitution (of the rational form in the world) in the relation 
of the supreme cause to the world, without finding the world 
sufficient by itself for that purpose/'^ 

But this is not the end of Kant^s contribution to the 
subject. By means of the Practical Eeason Kant, in effect, 
restores what he had put beyond the reach of the Pure Eeason. 
Man, as an object of the understanding, is governed by 
necessity, but as the subject of duty he must be conceived 
as a free agent, and the conditions under which alone the moral 
law is possible necessitate the existence of God. For justice 
demands that morality should be attended by blessedness. 
This result can never be realized in this imperfect world, and 
is often entirely falsified. Morality, therefore, postulates the 
existence of God and the prospect of immortality, in order 
that ideal justice may be secured by divine holiness and 
power in a heavenly world. It is not necessary here to 
explain this ethical doctrine in detail, still less to criticise it. 
But it is important to note its influence in developing the 
view that religion must be justified, not on the ground of 
intellectual certitude, but as a postulate essential to morality, 
and as depending for its verification on a practical judgment of 
the absolute worth of morality, and therefore of all that is in- 
volved in its deliverances. 

Enough has been said to show that Kant supplies the 
philosophical basis of what is now known as Agnosticism. 
Once deny that the ideas of the Eeason can be theoretically 
known, and their regulative use becomes precarious. Men 
may refuse to explain the world as if these ideas were true. 
Then, if this assumption be an indispensable condition of 
world-explanation, those who refuse to make it are necessarily 
reduced to that state of entire suspense as to the origin 
and meaning of the universe which is meant by Agnosticism. 
Again, let the unique character of moral consciousness be 
denied, and the practical considerations urged by Kant in 
support of Theism fall to the ground at once. Both these 
positions have since been taken up. As to the latter, a 
determined and sustained effort has been made so to use 
the doctrine of evolution as to give a purely naturalistic 

1 Prolegomena, section on the "Limitation of Piire Reason." 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 51 

interpretation to the phenomena of morality. As to the former, 
Kant's influence upon Sir William Hamilton, and through him 
upon Mansel, supplied both the impulse and the intellectual 
foundation for the agnosticism of Huxley and of Herbert 
Spencer. 

Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy of the Unconditioned, 
adopted by Mansel, set forth a doctrine of God as the Abso- 
lute and Infinite. This was defined as signifying His existence 
outside all relations. But knowledge of an object involves 
its relation to the knowing mind. Therefore, the knowledge 
of God is impossible, partly because of the incapacity of the 
mind to rise above the relations of sense-experience, but 
chiefly because the supposed glory of the Absolute God is 
incompatible with His being known as He really is. Mansel, 
in the interests of the Christian creed, adopted this philos- 
ophy, and sought to establish the creed as giving a regulative 
knowledge of God, who in His proper nature must of neces- 
sity be unknown and unknowable. Thus a convenient proof 
was found of the necessity of the creed, while it was ex- 
empted from too searching criticism. The reasoning of Hamil- 
ton convinced Huxley, and led Spencer to discover "the ultimate 
religious truth of the highest possible certainty . . . that 
the power which the universe manifests to us is utterly 
inscrutable."^ 

It is easy to note the outstanding features of the Critical 
Philosophy. First of all is its setting up of abstract "things 
in themselves," the existence of which is implied in experience, 
though the knowledge of them is forever impossible. In the 
second place, there is the absolute separation assumed at the 
start between the Ego and the non-Ego. The two are set in 
opposition, and then the problem is to bring them into the 
relation involved in knowledge. Thirdly, there is the abstract 
division of the different functions of the mind between the 
Pure and the Practical Reason, then between the Sensibility, 
the Understanding, and the Pure Eeason, with different 
standards of values for the conclusions of each. Again, the 
treatment of the ideas of the Reason as being necessary for 
the organizing of knowledge into a consistent whole, but as. 

^ First Principles^ third edition, p. 46. 



52 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

theoretically invalid, is absolutely new. Skepticism as to 
the deliverances of human faculties had indeed appeared from 
time to time in Greek philosophy. But no Greek would 
have thought of attributing a higher measure of objective 
validity to perception, and what is involved in it, than to the 
higher faculties of the mind. It was the limitation and 
confusion of knowledge by sense that, to the Greeks, laid 
it open to general suspicion. To assign a higher measure of 
truth to the concepts of the Understanding than to the ideas 
of the Eeason would have startled, not only Plato, but even 
Protagoras; while both would have been equally astonished 
to find ideas treated as essential to the completeness of 
knowledge, yet as being themselves incapable of con- 
firmation as true. Once more, there is the assumption that 
all that is implied in the principle of Causality is a phe- 
nomenal connection, and that this principle being thus given 
in phenomenal experience, cannot be used to explain the 
origin of that experience itself. To adopt such a principle in 
such a sense as to preclude all explanation of the meaning 
and constitution of the world, is a contradiction of an intuition 
of mankind which has been almost unquestioned till now, and 
has directed all the highest efforts of human thought. This very 
fact suggests that, in this point at least, the testimony of con- 
sciousness has been misread.^ 

For the present, however, detailed criticism is out of place. 
What we are concerned to note is that this development has im- 
posed an additional task on Christian Evidences; namely, to 
establish the claim of human thought that when it is applied to 
the highest and ultimate objects it can attain to knowledge; and 
to provide an adequate account of the nature and philosophy of 
Eevelation. 

There is no need to pursue the subject by giving an 
account of the various forms of Transcendental Philosophy, 
which, starting from the Kantian standpoint, attempted in 
various ways to attain complete consistency of thought by 
means of absolute idealism. The most thorough-going and 
influential of such systems is, of course, that of Hegel. In some 
respects Hegelianism has brought powerful intellectual support 

> See Martineau, Sttidy of Religion. 



GENERAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 53 

to the Christian religion. The comprehensive attempt to set 
forth the rationality of all that is real, and to give to Christianity 
its dominant place in the unfolding of Eeason and the realization 
of Spirit, has placed tlie whole question of Christian Evidences 
on a higher plane of thought. But the characteristic danger of 
all such systems of absolute idealism is to represent the last ab- 
stractions of thought as the first realities of existence. The 
abstract character of Hegelian speculation is largely responsible 
for raising the speculative difficulty of attributing personality, 
and therefore consciousness, to God. The problem raised, there- 
fore, concerns the combination of self-consciousness with in- 
finitude. Moreover, the exaggerated intellectualism of the system 
has obscured the significance of will, and treated the existence 
and history of the world and humanity as due to the immanent 
and indeed automatic but impersonal unfolding of reason in its 
characteristic triplicity of movement through the three stages of 
Position, Opposition, and Eeconciliation. 

With the loss of personality at the source, and of will in the 
creation and ordering of the universe, has gone the ability to do 
full justice to the meaning of personality in man. The collective 
life of humanity has counted for more than the individual, and 
the ultimate manifestation of Spirit in the life of humanity has 
cast the need of personal immortality into the shade. On all 
these points, therefore, transcendental idealism has raised new 
problems for Christian thought. 



CHAPTER II 

THE INADEQUACY OF EXISTING SYSTEMS OF 
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES TO SATISFY THE 
MODERN POINT OF VIEW 

WHILE the changes described in the last chapter 
have taken place in philosophical thought, it 
is equally necessary to take account of the 
steady and many-sided advance of the physical sciences, 
by means of inductive inquiry and experiment, and of 
its effect upon Christian Evidences. At each stage of this 
advance, men have reflected upon the intellectual instru- 
ments and methods by which they have reached their con- 
clusions, until they have formed a great body of Scientific 
or Inductive Logic, which has thrown into the shade the old 
Formal Logic of Aristotle. Bacon, as has been seen, exposed 
the misconceptions to which the human mind is liable in 
attempting to explain nature. He expelled theological and 
metaphysical causes from the domains of natural science, 
and attempted to lay down the general principles and methods 
of truly inductive inquiry. But Bacon spoke to a large extent 
by anticipation. Natural science had done little in his time 
to use the instruments which, as he pointed out, lay ready 
to hand. But with every subsequent use of these instruments 
the reflective understanding of them has grown. Hence 
there is a double result. On the one hand is the immensely 
extended range of the physical sciences. On the other is the 
elaboration of a great system of principles and rules, enjoined 
as laws upon the human mind in its pursuit of truth in these 
departments of inquiry. 

What, then, happens when men treat the so-called physical 
world as the object of the exhaustive inquiries which are 

54 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 55 

pursued by modern science ? First of all, the attitude taken up 
is frequently that the field to be investigated is independently, 
and probably that it is exclusively, real. In the next place, that 
the methods by which it is explained are the only methods which 
can lead to objective truth. 

Even if this be not the complete philosophy of the physical in- 
quirer, it is the mental attitude into which he is forced to throw 
himself for the immediate purposes of his task. 

The world, which he investigates, whether his interest be 
mathematical, astronomical, physical, chemical, or biological, 
is treated as external to the man who observes it, and as 
independent of him. While he is absorbed in observation 
of it, he sinks to the level of a mere unheeded onlooker. The 
particular relations in which that world stands to him, and he 
to it, are ignored. It is for him, even more emphatically than 
for the ordinary man, something which has its reality and its 
conditions wholly apart from the consideration whether 
he and other men, or any conscious being whatever, 
exist or not. 

When the physical nature of the world is thus cut off from its 
relation to the spiritual consciousness, and treated as an isolated 
reality, certain conceptions must be called in as the basis of 
whatever explanation of it is possible under such conditions. 
Among these, for example, are the conceptions of matter, force, 
energy, atoms, and molecules. For the purposes of scientific 
inquiry the independent reality of some or of all these conceptions 
is assumed without question. 

Then the physical world, which has thus been isolated 
for the purposes of a limited explanation in terms of these 
physical conceptions, is often treated as if it were primary, 
and the means by which everything else is to be explained. 
Those who have allowed themselves, unreflectively, to be 
dominated by these great physical conceptions, consider 
it both legitimate and necessary to think away for scientific 
purposes the distinction between mind and matter. The 
world explained in terms of force, energy, atoms, etc., is the 
one reality. Mind must be reduced to it, and explained in its 
terms. If it is now impossible to take the older and cruder 
way of the materialists, and boldly to treat thought as a 



56 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

product of phosphorus, yet it is both possible and common to 
treat the physical side as the reality, and the side of conscious- 
ness as what is termed an "epiphaenomenon," or, in other words, 
an inoperative shadow. 

Thus a systematic attempt is made to naturalize spirit. First 
of all, the intellect, the moral nature, and the religious sentiments 
are treated as physically inoperative. In the next place, an at- 
tempt is made to get over the mystery of their present enormous 
development by tracing their gradual evolution from small 
beginnings, as though the importance and distinctness of the 
product could be explained away by considerations of 
the time which had been taken and the methods used in 
producing it. 

Hence the naturalistic treatment of spirit involves the assump- 
tion that what is abstracted for the purposes of scientific in- 
vestigation supplies, objectively, the totality of existence, and 
subjectively, the conditions of whatever world-explanation is 
possible. 

Of course, when this attitude is taken up, what Dr. Martineau 
has well termed "the reverential estimate of human nature" 
vanishes, and with it not only belief in, but respect for, 
Christianity; for Christianity has infinitely exalted the con- 
sciousness of men, and the estimate of their worth. Naturalism 
thus inevitably becomes the foe, not only of the articles of 
Christian faith, but of the fundamental principles of the 
Christian temper. 

Here, then, is an added task for Christian Evidences. It is 
necessary to criticise the alleged sufiiciency of scientific concep- 
tions for the complete explanation of the world, to reduce them 
to their proper position, as assumptions made for the purpose 
of a limited inquiry; and to show that they unduly contract 
the world and destroy the possibility of its explanation directly 
they are applied beyond the narrow practical limits which 
belong to them. The limited problem of science calls out 
only a portion of the powers which belong to human nature. It 
is necessary to vindicate the powers, spiritual and moral, 
which have been slighted and suppressed, and to make good 
their claim to take part in the discovery of the full reality 
of the universe. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 57 

But the metaphysical and scientific objections which have 
been noticed are by no means the only difficulties which the 
modern mind feels in regard to the Christian religion. These 
must be taken in connection with many other influences, which 
have to do rather with the imagination than with the reason 
or understanding ; rather with the effect of scientific discoveries 
upon the general intellectual outlook than with any ac- 
tually ascertained conclusions. A large number of Hesitations 
have become widespread, which in the earlier ages were hardly 
felt. 

1. In the first place, men feel — as never before — the vastness 
of nature and the insignificance of men. Of course this feeling 
has always been more or less present to men's minds. But in the 
old days, when astronomy was limited in its range, and when 
the earth was supposed to be the center of the universe, it was 
easier for most people to think of man as being a supreme end 
of the purposes of God than it is now. The result of modern 
discoveries upon the minds of many is to overwhelm and almost 
stupefy them with a sense of the vastness of the universe and 
of its processes of evolution, so that they cry out with the 
Psalmist, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? or the 
son of man, that Thou visitest him ?'' without the deep conscious- 
ness of divine grace and of human dignity by which the Psalmist 
so quickly recovered himself. 

2. In the next place, there is the impression made upon 
many minds by the study of nature that its methods and ends 
are entirely impersonal. The man who has placed himself at 
the modern point of view finds himself in the midst of a vast 
loom, which weaves its products throughout infinite space and 
time by an unceasing evolution; decay and reformation 
alternating. The whole process appears so vast and so 
mysterious, its inmost laws so mechanical, that there seems 
no trace within it of a personal spirit and of a personal 
concern. 

Men, having blotted out from their memory the great 
pageant of human history, stand in the presence of what is 
left and find all signs of meaning and purpose gone. Even 
when history is recalled to the mind thus overwhelmed, it is 
urged that its development is so diverse, so incomplete, and so 



58 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

impermanent as to afford no sure indication that it is the end 
for which the world exists; or, even if it be so, of what the 
precise end involved in human nature and its history is. 
Men point to the very real differences in the moral stand- 
ards, and in the religious thought and practices of different races, 
and urge that in presence of so great and far-reaching diver- 
gences no conclusion can be drawn. They assert that the 
history of the world is so incomplete as to be utterly dis- 
appointing from any spiritual point of view. They ask what 
assurance there is in a universe which, so far as its present 
physical constitution is concerned, seems hastening toward 
ultimate exhaustion, that the triumphs of spiritual conscious- 
ness, taken at their best, are so lasting as to be the real key to 
the whole. 

3. With this general attitude of mind comes a doubt as to the 
competence of human powers, and above all of the most spiritual 
of them, to read reality aright; especially the doubt how far 
human consciousness is any guide to the existence and nature 
of God. This doubt announces itself as a protest against An- 
thropomorphism. It has its philosophical justification, as we 
have seen, in the Critical Philosophy, and its confirmation in 
the absurdities into which religious extravagance and unphil- 
osophical theology have sometimes fallen. But in its essence it 
lies deeper than either of these influences, and extends more 
widely than the sphere in which they have been, at least with 
clear consciousness, felt. 

Matthew Arnold gave literary expression to this doubt 
in his criticism of orthodox Theism as the worship of 
"a magnified non-natural man." He interpreted the thoughts 
of great multitudes of men who are not philosophical, but 
are in a state of confirmed skepticism as to the worth and 
importance of human nature in the world. Matthew Arnold 
did not, of course, intend his protest to be carried so far. 
He understood the universe to reveal the presence and 
working of a "Power not ourselves which makes for right- 
eousness.'^ This is all that Theists contend for, provided it 
be conceded that if a power is to make for righteousness 
in Arnold's sense, it must be inherently righteous, and that 
it can only be inherently righteous provided it is self-conscious. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 59 

4. In connection with this reluctance to find in human 
faculties the key to the nature and ends of God, there is 
the imaginative deification of evolution, as if it were the 
real cause of all events. The man who forbids it to be 
said that God did this or that, imagines himself on safe ground 
when he declares that evolution did it. Of course, if thoughtful 
and competent, he is obliged to confess, when challenged, 
that evolution did nothing of the kind. All these terms — 
Evolution, Natural Selection, the Survival of the Fittest, and 
the like — are descriptions of a method, or of a result, and not 
the definition of a cause. Yet to mistake a result, a method, or 
a description for a reason and a cause is the failing of the com- 
mon talk of many Evolutionists, a mistake from which Darwin, 
at least in his circumspect moments, kept himself entirely 
free. 

5. In addition to all these influences must be added a 
deepened sense of the mystery of evil. It is needless to 
enlarge upon this. In part it is accounted for by increased 
knowledge of what takes place in nature. In part it results 
from the heightened sense, in modern times, of the evil of 
physical pain: in part from a deepening of sympathy. It is 
ministered to by a spirit of selective pessimism, which gives 
undue prominence to the proportion of evil in the whole 
texture of the world: darkening the problem still further 
by reading into many forms of evil a moral significance 
which does not belong to them. Above all, there is the 
weakening of the sense of moral responsibility. With it 
comes a tendency to treat moral evil as a misfortune, and not as 
sin, to underestimate the part it plays in the total misery of 
the world, and to value moral responsibility so little, that the 
possibility of evil appears too great a price to pay for its 
possession. 

6. Once more, the modern mind is dissatisfied with any 
view of Christianity which isolates it from other religions 
and treats it as accidental, external, and merely miraculous. 
There is an uprising against the conception of earth as "a 
ruined world," and of Christianity as a purely miraculous 
remedy for the accidental fact of sin. This is in part due 
to the failure of the sense of sin, in part to the weakening 



60 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of belief in moral freedom. As a consequence, it becomes in- 
creasingly difficult to imagine any dealing of God with the world 
which is beyond the range of natural law. It has a measure of 
justification owing to the exaggerated way in which Christianity 
is represented by some of its advocates. AVhen to such a 
representation is added a conception of the Christian remedy 
which sometimes crudely applies to God either considera- 
tions drawn from modern politics and judicial procedure, or 
conceptions similar to those of human magic, the revolt 
becomes complete. 

Such are some of the objections which gather round the 
more strictly speculative and scientific difficulties already 
described. 

They, again, set a new task to Christian Evidences, 
namely, to expound and to justify the view of the value of 
human life upon which the Christian religion is built up, 
and to bring home that only by the acceptance of that 
value can a completely human life, in all the range of its 
powers, be lived out. It must be shown that man never 
has breathed, and never can breathe, the breath of life 
within the narrow confines by which he is now supposed to be 
limited, and that what is necessary to his highest life and 
completest health is thereby authenticated as true. If the 
power of human faculties has to be vindicated against 
Agnosticism, the primary deliverances of spiritual conscious- 
ness must also be vindicated against the invasion of unmanly 
doubt. 

In this respect, the limitations of Christian Evidences 
are apparent. It is often said that Christian Evidences 
have never converted any doubter. If this were true, it 
would not condemn them, for spiritual consciousness must 
complete itself by giving account of its principles and reasons. 
It must explain and justify itself to the world. The state- 
ment is, however, exaggerated; for the process of conversion, 
due to deep and silent forces working within, has often been 
assisted and completed by the removal of intellectual doubts. 
At the same time, it is true that the effective removal of 
those doubts and hesitations is brought about, not so much 
by arguments as by the accession of new power to trust 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 61 

the intuitions and needs of the spiritual consciousness 
as trustworthy guides to the inmost reality of the universe. 
By this means, most difficulties, if not resolved, lose their 
practical importance, because they become subordinate to 
a still more constraining conviction of truth. It must be 
the work of Christian Evidences at this stage so to interpret 
the intuitions of Christian consciousness in their relation to 
nature as to afford to faith something like a speculative justifica- 
tion of itself. 

It becomes necessary to consider how far the systems of 
Christian Evidence generally accepted as representative 
meet the present necessities of the case, as they have now been 
surveyed. 

In examining this, two preliminary considerations must be 
borne in mind. 

In the first place, the Christian Evidences, accepted at any 
time, are, of necessity, bound up with the most congenial 
philosophy current at that time. Partly it is in reference to 
the leading conceptions of philosophy and to its representatives 
that the claims of Christianity must be made good. Partly the 
men who attempt the proof, being themselves creatures of their 
generation, are of necessity steeped in the general philosophic 
conceptions of their time. Hence it inevitably comes to pass 
that frequently the proof of Christianity is presented in terms 
of a philosophy which is already becoming out of date. Not 
being, for the most part, philosophical specialists, theologians 
are apt to use general conceptions for their own purposes after 
the best thought of their time has ceased to be satisfied with 
them. Thus Christian Evidences tend to be expressed in 
inadequate forms and based upon inadequate, or incomplete, 
suppositions. 

If this has been the case at various periods in the past, still 
more is it inevitable at the present time, when the vast increase 
of knowledge and the approved apparatus of scientific and 
critical research have created a greater gulf between the thought 
of the twentieth century and that of the eighteenth, than has 
been known before throughout the Christian era. 

And, in the second place, it must never be forgotten that 
many special contributions in aid of various iQterests of 



62 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Christian Evidences, must be made before the whole system 
of such evidences is transformed to meet the requirements 
of the latest thought. The pressure of particular controversies, 
and the exploration of particular provinces, produce much 
enlargement of view before their results are incorporated in 
general systems; still more before such systems win wide 
recognition. This will be increasingly the case as the field 
of investigation is enlarged, and the points threatened are 
multiplied. The present day abounds in such contributions to 
theological thought, revising both the exposition and the defence 
of Christianity by the help of the most recent knowledge, 
and in regard to the latest objections that have been 
raised. 

Dealing now, however, with the recognized presentation of 
Christian Evidences in systematic form, it is manifest that the 
distinction between natural and revealed religion has deter- 
mined both their method and their substance down to the 
present time. Butler, for example, adopts precisely the same 
general point of view as Aquinas. Eeligion being divided 
into natural and revealed, it is the office of revealed religion, 
that is of Christianity, to give a "republication of natural 
religion" in an authoritative way,^ and then to supplement 
the truth thus acquired by a revelation of the way of salva- 
tion through the Son of God and the Holy Ghost. Butler 
even goes so far as to say that "the essence of natural religion 
may be said to consist in religious regards to God the Father 
Almighty/'^ 

Starting with this distinction, the general course of procedure 
has been, until recent times, somewhat as follows. 

First of all, God is defined an an Infinite and Eternal 
Spirit, the First Cause of the universe. This position is 
made good by the use of any or all of the three great 
arguments, known as the Ontological, the Cosmological, and the 
Teleological, to w^hich may be added the argument from 
General Consent, and so forth. Having established by these 
means the existence of a necessary Spiritual Being, who is the 
Author of the universe and its Orderer, as exhibiting system 
and marks of design, the next step is to establish His 



Analoov, Part II. chap. i. ' Ibid. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 63- 

possession of the natural attributes which are necessary to 
the immensity of His task, and subsequently of those moral 
attributes which are necessary to explain His relationship to 
man. Here comes in the moral argument for the existence of 
God Himself as a moral Personality. At the next stage, those 
considerations are brought in which deal with man not merely 
as a natural or a moral being, but as one having religious 
susceptibilities; conscious of being dependent on God and 
seeking fellowship with the Author of his being. God is, 
therefore, seen as the Source and End of religion, giving a 
revelation in order that men may think right thoughts of Him 
and may entertain a right disposition toward Him: communi- 
cating to them the knowledge of their ultimate destiny which 
is necessary both to reinforce their moral nature and to 
satisfy their religious aspirations. Finally, the fact of sin is 
recognized and the need of redemption. Hence, by a new series 
of arguments, mainly concerned with historical evidences, it is 
sought to make good those facts and doctrines of redemption in 
Christ which are, above all, the distinctive marks of the Christian 
religion. 

Each stage is on a different plane. When the existence 
of God is established, as necessary to the understanding of 
nature, the starting-point is that of man as designer and 
constructor, and a passage is made from the world of man's 
products to the universe as a system, revealing a divine 
Designer and Constructor. At the next stage, man as a moral 
being comes in view; judging himself and others, conscious 
of being himself judged. From this new tract of experience 
the argument of a moral Governor is derived. Thence 
advance is made to man worshiping, craving a more than 
finite and natural satisfaction. Herein is found the evidence of 
God as the object of religion and the giver of revelation. Finally, 
there is the consciousness of sin and the need of recon- 
ciliation and redemption. Herein is found the confirmation of 
the gospel, which makes known Christ as Eeconciler and 
Eedeemer. 

The first criticism to be passed upon this general system is 
that it does not reflect the history of theological belief, that 
its successive stages rather invert than reproduce the process 



k 



64 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of religious advance in the human mind. Taking it as it stands, 
we might imagine that man was put down in the natural world, 
in the first instance, as an independent observer in a state of 
primitive atheism; that on examination, he came first to the 
conclusion that the world must have had an adequate cause, 
advanced thereby to a theoretic belief in a Divine Being, and 
was led on gradually to define His attributes. Then it might 
be supposed that subsequently man became conscious that he 
was called by God to a spiritual communion, in which light was 
to be thrown upon his own duty and destiny, and that, in the 
last place, he received the knowledge of a special and super- 
natural dispensation, called into existence to remedy the sin into 
which he had fallen. 

The more, however, religion is studied, whether as pre- 
sented in the Holy Scriptures or throughout human history, 
in its more primitive or more elaborated forms, even in its 
growth in individual minds among ourselves, the clearer it 
becomes that men have not built up from evidences outside 
themselves a theoretic faith in God, proceeding thence to 
fuller determination of His attributes and multiplying ab- 
stract conceptions about Him. A religious consciousness of God 
has come first. ^ That consciousness has three conditions. It 
depends upon inner deliverances of the human spirit itself; 
these deliverances are used to explain the outward phenomena 
and events of the world, and they are molded by the practical 
influence of religion, into which every human child has been 
born. Religious belief, wherever we find it, starts from the 
consciousness of Another, to whom the spirit stands in 
immediate relationship ; a Person, so far as the consciousness 
of personality in the worshiper is complete enough to en- 
able him to attribute personality to the object of his worship. 
The description of this Other and the conception of His relation 
to the phenomena of the world varies according to the tempera- 
ment, the development, the experience, and the training of 
the particular worshiper. It may harden into the One or 
be broken into the Many of Polytheism; it may rise to the 
grandeur of the Hebrew Monotheism or may be degraded to 



» We are not at present concerned to consider how it was suggested, or 
from what sources it was derived. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 65 

the level of African fetish-worship. It may be set forth and 
interpreted by the highest forms of philosophical doctrine, or 
it may be held in the primitive and concrete fashion of the 
simplest and least intellectual type. But, however it is held, 
its source and nature are not primarily intellectual, in the 
usual sense of the term, nor is it attained by a process of 
world-explanation. All religions have partaken of the direct- 
ness and spirituality of revelation. The one element common 
to the highest and lowest forms of religion, and throughout 
all its varieties, is the consciousness of Another revealed, to 
whom religion makes a suitable response, according to the 
mental, moral, and spiritual development of those who are 
conscious of the divine presence. Eeason and revelation are 
not two separately working sources of the knowledge of God. 
The history of religion is the history of revelation, of the real 
or supposed presentation of God to the spiritual consciousness. 
Eeason has been concerned in the apprehension of this object, has 
subsequently worked upon the content of what has been pre- 
sented to it, and has evolved its doctrines from that content. So 
far, therefore, from God having been first of all conceived as the 
Cause and Designer of a world, and then as having come into 
spiritual relations with men, the exact opposite is the truth. He 
has first been apprehended as being in relation to men, and has 
then been discovered to be the only key to the interpretation of 
the world. 

The Old Testament furnishes an illustration of this 
process. God is known, first of all, as the God of Abraham, of 
Isaac, and of Jacob; the AU-sufl&cient God, who watches over 
their Journey through life, shaping it and sustaining them in it 
by His fellowship and strength. From that simple patriarchal 
experience the idea of God develops. He is seen in succession 
to be the God of Israel as a nation, of all nations, and of the 
universe, until from the childlike sense of His immediate 
presence the climax of the Old Testament theology is reached 
in the doctrine of God contained in the last twenty-six chapters 
of Isaiah. Corresponding stages can be discovered in the 
growth of religious consciousness in a little child at the present 
day. 

The origin of religion is in the primitive consciousness of 



66 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Another, in whom life is grounded, the relation to whom is of 
supreme significance. Its appearance marks the first dawning 
consciousness of the distinction and yet the unity between 
the finite and the infinite. History shows no trace of a 
primitive race of men capable of attaining by reason to a 
great conception of a world-creating and a world-designing 
God, who then becomes the object of religion. It shows a 
primitive and advancing religious consciousness which is in- 
vestigated by reflection at every stage of its development, and 
made to yield ever fuller definitions and larger deductions for 
the interpretation of that nature and unity of the world and 
man which a growingly rational consciousness unfolds to the 
human race. 

Those systems of Christian Evidence which have been 
molded by Aquinas have, therefore, failed by misreading the 
distinction between Natural and Eevealed Eeligion. Further, 
by this means they have obscured the fact that all religion 
has its origin in an act of faith. Again, they have frequently 
conceived God as so external to the world that revelation 
has become external and mechanical; to our present modes 
of thought, incomprehensible. They have made an almost 
absolute breach between Christianity as the religion of 
redemption and religion generally; instead of treating 
Christianity as the consummation of all religion, and as 
accomplishing redemption because it embodies in the highest 
and most perfect form influences of grace and truth, which 
have been implicit in religion from the first. The conception 
of God as First Cause, or as Absolute Being, so far from 
being the starting-point, is the last abstraction from the 
concrete content in which He has been presented to spiritual 
consciousness. A result of making that first which in 
reality came last has been the setting up of a mechanical expla- 
nation of design in nature which the growing acceptance of 
evolutionary philosophy has shown to be inadequate to the facts 
of the world as they stand. A true philosophy of religion, 
while owing to changed scientific conceptions it may lay 
less stress upon particular evidences of design, such as the 
construction of the eye or ear, will make much more of the 
indwelling presence of a Divine Being, working in and 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 67 

through all things for the accomplishment of spiritual purposes, 
which become increasingly manifest in the history of the world 
and to the consciousness of men. 

Once more, it is of the greatest importance to remember 
that, after all, the particular theistic doctrine, which is sup- 
posed by such writers as Aquinas, Butler, and Paley to be 
reached by reason, is simply an abstraction from the complete 
Christian doctrine of God, and represents just those elements 
of that doctrine which are thought necessary either for the 
explanation of nature or for the explanation of man as a 
moral being. The rest, having been thus put aside, is brought 
back as a Christian appendix, given by revelation. Thus 
just that portion is abstracted from the original fullness of 
Christ's teaching which is needed for the solution of a particular 
intellectual problem. Then the complete Christian doctrine is 
tested by the abstract doctrine of God which has been set up, and 
is supposed to be independently known by reason. And, in the 
last resort, an independent method of proof is sought for that 
portion of the doctrine of God which has been transferred to the 
realm of revelation. 

It is simple matter of fact that the doctrine of so-called 
Natural Theism, which the Evidence writers treat as derived 
from reason, is as truly and distinctively Christian in its 
source as any doctrine of the New Testament. The reason 
that this is not recognized lies in the fact that it happens 
to approximate to the teaching of Greek philosophy, and 
especially to that of Aristotle. But waiving the question 
how far the doctrine of Aristotle is derivable from reason in 
the sense in which Aquinas and Butler understood it, it is 
made to set forth Natural Theism only by importing into it 
elements of the Christian doctrine of God, to which it did 
indeed approximate, but without ever fully reaching them. 
No greater mistake can be made than that of Butler, when 
he assigns the knowledge of God the Father to Natural 
Religion, as he understood that term. Personality, the en- 
compassing of a condescending love, the offer of a divine 
fellowship, which are necessary to any intelligible belief in 
"God the Father,'^ are just what neither Plato nor Aristotle 
ever fully realized, and what reason, by itself, has never 



68 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" ■ 

reached. Thus an arbitrary division of the religious conscious- 
ness, and the undue abstraction of portions of a complete 
doctrine of God, have led to the misreading of history, and 
to a misstatement as to the grounds and growth of theistic 
belief. 

N"o more striking illustration of the mischief which results 
from this general treatment can be found than is supplied 
by Paley's Natural Theology, and by his Evidences of 
Christianity. And this quite independently of the question 
as to whether his arguments as to particular marks of design 
in nature have been invalidated by the doctrine of evolution 
or not. The whole of Paley's argument in his Natural 
Theology grows out of the celebrated illustration of the 
finding of a watch upon a heath, and the inferences which 
would be drawn by the discoverer from the observation of 
its contrivances and action. From this masterpiece of human 
design, Paley proceeds to survey the whole universe of natural 
objects, ranging throughout the realms of vegetable and animal 
life, and passing thence to the heavenly bodies, in order to 
show that everywhere are to be found equally convincing 
marks of contrivance, the complexity, vastness, reproductiveness, 
and vitality of which point to a Divine Wisdom and Power in- 
finitely beyond what is displayed in the works of man. All these 
objects are investigated from the physical or physiological stand- 
point. They are treated as isolated objects, equally distinct from 
God, from man as a conscious being, and from one another. 
There is no consideration of the spiritual man, as such, nor of 
the spiritual community in which human life is consummated. 
Still less is there any consideration of the universe, as a whole, 
to which spiritual consciousness belongs, and to which it is 
relative. 

As to this world of natural objects, found everywhere 
with marks of design upon them, Paley argues, "Contrivance, 
if established, appears to me to prove everything which we 
wish to prove.^^ "Among other things,'^ he proceeds, "it proves 
the personality of the Deity, as distinguished from what is 
sometimes called nature, sometimes called a principle."^ Our 
evidence, therefore, of the existence of a Personal God is to 

1 Natural Theology, chap, xxiii. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 69 

be found in contrivance throughout nature. The presence, mag- 
nitude, and ends of such contrivance enable us to find out what 
are "the natural attributes of the Deity." "The attributes of 
such a Being, suppose His reality to be proved, must be adequate 
to the magnitude, extent, and multiplicity of His operations; 
which are not only vast beyond comparison with those performed 
by any other power; but, so far as respects our conceptions of 
them, infinite, because they are unlimited on all sides."^ The 
attributes thus disclosed are said to be Omnipotence^ Omniscience, 
Omnipresence, Eternity, Self-existence, Necessary Existence, and 
Spirituality. 

Further, "of the 'unity of the Deity,^" Paley says, "the 
proof is, the uniformity of plan observable in the universe."^ 
^'The goodness of the Deitj" is established as follows. "The 
proof of the divine goodness rests upon two propositions; 
each, as we contend, capable of being made out by observations 
drawn from the appearances of nature. The first is, that in 
a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, 
the design of the contrivance is heneficial. The second, that 
the Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations, be- 
yond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the 
purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by 
the operation of pain/'^ 

The following is the conclusion of the whole work, '^n 
all cases wherein the mind feels itself in danger of being 
confounded by variety, it is sure to rest upon a few strong 
points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Among a multi- 
tude of proofs, it is one that does the business. . . . There 
is no subject in which the tendency to dwell upon select or 
single topics is so usual, because there is no subject, of which 
in its f uU extent the latitude is so great as that of natural history 
applied to the proof of an intelligent Creator. . . . The 
existence and character of the Deity is, in every view, the most 
interesting of all human speculations. In none, however, is it 
more so than as it facilitates the belief of the fundamental 
articles of Revelation."* 

Since, then, the whole of Pale/s argument is confined to 

1 Natural Theology, chap. xxiv. 2 Ibid., chap, xxv, 

> Ibid., chap. xxvi. * Ibid., chaip. xxvii. 



70 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

establishing a Divine Artificer sufficient to account for the objects 
of the natural world, his Natural Theology ends without ever 
rising to the highest meaning or to the highest proof of the per- 
fection of God. The whole burden of proving the goodness of 
God is laid, as we have seen, upon the testimony of the benefi- 
cial results of most natural contrivances, judged in the interests 
of animal life, and from the evidence of sensation in the 
animal creation. 

From this proof of the existence, nature, and attri- 
butes of God, Palej passes at a bound to the Evidences of Chris- 
tianity.^ 

First of all, what is the meaning of the Christianity to be 
proved? Paley thus describes it: "Of what a revelation dis- 
closes to mankind, one, and only one, question can properly be 
asked. "Was it of importance to mankind to know, or to be better 
assured of? In this question, when we turn our thoughts to 
the great Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and 
of a future judgment, no doubt can possibly be entertained. He 
who gives me riches or honors, does nothing; he who even gives 
me health, does little in comparison with that which lays before 
me just grounds for expecting a restoration to life, and a day 
of account and retribution, which thing Christianity hath 
done for millions. Other articles of the Christian faith, 
although of infinite importance when placed beside any other 
topic of human inquiry, are only the adjuncts and circumstances 
of this.''2 

Why is it that Paley attaches such unique importance 
"to the great Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, 
and of a future judgment," that it even excludes from his view 
the Christian revelation of God, and of the relations in 
which He stands to mankind, save as the Dispenser of rewards 
and punishments? This is an inversion of our more recent 
point of view, which makes the revelation of God the primary 
object of Christianity, and ultimately rests our belief in 
immortality upon our belief in God. The answer is that 
the doctrine of Paley's Moral Philosophy is accountable for 
this emphasis. Man, according to Paley, is so constructed that 

» The two works are separate. 

» Evidences of Christianity, Part III. chap. viii. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 71 

the pursuit of selfish happiness is the only motive that appeals 
to him. Hence the only way in which morality, as obedience to 
the law of God, becomes possible, is by giving to him a trust- 
worthy revelation that everlasting prospects are before him, and 
that his everlasting happiness can only be secured by his success- 
ful resistance of those solicitations which are inconsistent with 
the divine commands. 

But if Christianity consists, above all, in authoritative 
information that we shall live for ever, and be rewarded 
or punished by God in that future existence, how is it to be 
proved? Paley's answer is, "In what way can a revelation 
be made, but by miracles? In none which we are able to 
conceive.''^ The proof of the articles of religion depend- 
ing, therefore, upon the miracles which were wrought to 
authenticate them, the proof of the miracles themselves depends 
upon the trustworthiness of the testimony to them. Here Paley 
is brought face to face with the contention of Hume's Essay 
on Miracles, that it is more probable that testimony should 
be false, owing to dishonesty or incompetence, than that 
miracles should be true. He has to show that, at least in 
respect of the gospel miracles, this estimate of probabilities 
is mistaken. He accomplishes this task by establishing the 
two following propositions. Firstly, "that there is satisfactory 
evidence that many, pretending to be original witnesses of 
the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labors, dangers, 
and sufferings, voluntarily undertaken and undergone in 
attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely 
in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts; 
and that they also submitted, from the same motives, 
to new rules of conduct.'' Secondly, "that there is not satis- 
factory evidence, that persons pretending to be original 
witnesses of any other similar miracles, have acted in the same 
manner, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and 
solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those 
accounts." 

Paley then supports his case by what he calls the 
"Auxiliary Evidences of Christianity." These are prophecy 
fulfilled, the morality of the gospel, the candor of the writers 

» Evidences of Christianity — "Preparatory Considerations." 



72 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of the New Testament, the identity of Christ's character in 
all the accounts given to us, the accordance with history of 
the New Testament accounts, undesigned coincidences, the 
history of the resurrection, and the propagation of Chris- 
tianity. The part of the argument concerned with unde- 
signed coincidences, Paley developed in his remarkable work, 
the Horae Paulinae. Finally, he devotes attention to "some 
popular objections/^ These are concerned with the dis- 
crepancies between the several gospels, erroneous opinions 
imputed to the apostles, the connection of Christianity with 
Jewish history, the rejection of Christianity by the Jews, the 
fact "that the Christian miracles are not recited or appealed 
to by early Christian writers themselves so fully or frequently 
as might have been expected,'^ the want of universality in the 
knowledge and reception of Christianity, and of greater 
clearness in the evidences and with the supposed effects of 
Christianity. 

Just as Paley failed to see that the Christian doctrine of 
God is the primary content of Christianity, and to establish 
it as essential to the understanding, the justification, and, 
above all, the satisfaction of human life, so in his Evidences 
no attention is paid to Christian experience as affording a 
spiritual verification of the revelation of the gospel. Chris- 
tianity is the revelation of our future existence by means of 
miracles. The fact which Paley feels called upon to explain, 
that the early Christian writers do not by any means rely 
so exclusively on miracles as they might have been expected 
to do, should have suggested to him that their faith in 
Christ rested upon altogether deeper grounds than the fact that 
immortality had been revealed by miracles adequately 
attested. The ultimate result of Paley's defence is that 
Christianity is treated simply as an external occurrence, and that 
all we have to ask about it is, as in the case of any other historical 
event, whether we have satisfactory evidence that this occurrence 
really took place. 

There is little cause for wonder that such evidences have 
aroused the suspicion and dislike of deeply religious men. 
There is scarcely anything that can be called strictly religious 
from beginning to end of Paley's theological writings. The 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 73 

only powers called into exercise by them are those used in draw- 
ing inferences from physical phenomena, and in establishing by 
investigation that particular historical events have taken place. 
Such inquiries are most useful, but they have nothing to do with 
the inmost life of religion ; nor is the Christianity which can be 
established by such means the Christianity of the New Testa- 
ment. Thus the revolt against Paley's Evidences is due, not 
merely to the fact that they are inadequate to the demands of 
modern thought and science, but that they are inadequate to the 
religious consciousness, and to its testimony as to the grounds 
upon which the Christian revelation, worthily conceived, is 
accepted as true. 

Somewhat similar objection, as to neglect to examine 
the spiritual consciousness as a whole, must be taken to 
Dr. Martineau^s work, A Study of Religion. It is almost 
superfluous to refer to the great services which Dr. Martineau 
rendered to the cause of ethical Theism as a lifelong opponent 
of materialistic philosophy. Especially is that cause indebted 
to him for his defence of the validity of human knowledge of 
God against Agnosticism, for his reinstatement of the argument 
from design as against Kant, and for the way in which he 
has faced the objections against Theism, on the ground of the 
existence of evil. Perhaps he rendered a yet greater and 
most lasting service by the way in which he gave expression 
to many of the highest intuitions and aspirations of the spiritual 
consciousness in his more devotional writings. To criticise the 
premises or the methods of such a writer, where they appear 
inadequate to the present needs of religion, is not to be insensible 
to these very great services. 

Coming to Dr. Martineau's Study of Religion in this 
spirit, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that its co- 
gency is impaired by undue abstraction throughout. Although 
the work is entitled A Study of Religion, yet no particular 
religion is studied from beginning to end. Above all, the Chris- 
tian religion is left out of account, though Dr. Martineau defends 
doctrines of God and of man which are derived from Christianity, 
albeit they do not represent the full content of the Christian 
doctrine. 

Dr. Martineau says in opening, "Understanding by Eeligion 



74 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

belief in an ever-living God, that is, of a Divine Mind and Will 
ruling the universe and holding moral relations with mankind, 
he [the reader] will hope, on the one hand, to be led to the 
innermost seat of this belief in the constitution of human nature ; 
and, on the other, to see developed from it the dependent varieties 
of thought implicit in so fruitful a germ, and the cognate truths 
inseparable from it by collateral relations."^ He adds, "It is 
only our artificial analysis that separates the two, and insists on 
calling the intellectual side of the fact a theology, the affectional 
a religion." Undoubtedly the separation of these two sides is 
not only artificial, but is disastrous to the interests of both. But 
if the affectional aspect is not to be separated from the intellec- 
tual, still less is it to be submerged by the intellectual. And the 
general impression produced by the whole argument is that 
the affectional elements of religion, except that of rever- 
ence for moral perfection, are left practically out of 
account. 

Further on. Dr. Martineau lays it down that, "If we live in 
union or affinity with God at all, it must be in several rela- 
tions, not in one alone, for our being is complex, and must 
touch His at every point. We suffer, we think, we will; 
what we feel is the pressure of His laws; what we know is the 
order of His reality; what we choose is from His possibilities, 
and how can there fail to be a path to Him from the sensitive, 
the intellectual, and the moral passages of our history P*'^ 
The important truth contained in this passage is obscured 
by an artificial analysis, which separates too completely the 
sensitive, intellectual, and moral "passages of our history," 
after the fashion of those older psychologists, who treated the 
mind as a bundle of faculties, each working separately from 
the others. Undoubtedly all the "passages of our history," 
and all the elements of our being, contribute to our experience 
and knowledge of God. But man is a unity. He is never 
for a moment entirely sensitive, or entirely intellectual, or 
entirely moral. Therefore these various means of his experi- 
ence by no means constitute different relationships with God, 
but simply contribute various elements to an apprehension of 
God which includes them all. Man must be conceived, not aa 

1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 1. * Ibid., vol. i. p. 17. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 75 

standing in separate relationships to God, according as one part 
of his being or another is predominantly affected, but as entering 
into a relationship sufficiently comprehensive to include 
all the elements of God's manifestation and of man's 
response to Him. 

In the case of the belief in God, it is, above all, neces- 
sary carefully to set out what it is ; then clearly to demonstrate 
its consistency with all the other facts made known in human 
consciousness, and its necessity to the full understanding of 
those facts in the system of relationships which they occupy 
in the world. Dr. Martineau says, "All religion resolves itself 
into a conscious relation on our part to a higher than we ; and, 
on the part of the rational universe at large, to a higher than 
all, i. e. to a mind supreme above the whole family of minds. 
The conditions of such supremacy are twofold. (1) Dynamical, 
consisting in the command of all methods needful for the 
accomplishment of contemplated ends. (2) Moral, consist- 
ing in the intrinsic ascendency of the highest ends, infallibly 
conceived and externally pursued, as the springs of the 
Divine WilL"^ There is some difficulty in understanding ex- 
actly what is meant by a ^^conscious relation ... on the part 
of the rational universe at large, to a higher than all,'' as con- 
trasted with individual consciousness. But taking the first 
clause, it is clear that if "all religion resolves itself into a con- 
scious relation to a higher than we," then the first work of a 
study of religion is to set forth the exact nature of that conscious- 
ness, and the relation which is revealed in it. But Dr. Martineau 
passes at once from this conscious relation to the conditions upon 
which it is dependent, and never returns, unless incidentally, to 
the consciousness itself. 

Proceeding to consider the conditions of religion. Dr. Mar- 
tineau discusses, in the first place, the dynamical ; in the second, 
the moral. But again, by undue abstraction, he keeps the two 
entirely apart. 

First of all, he attempts to show how men came to believe 
in God as Cause. Giving the general results of an elaborate 
and lengthy inquiry, the following is the process which is said 
to have taken place. (1) In the first place, man becomes 

* Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 137. 



76 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

conscious of the opposition between the ego and the non-ego. 
(2) Then he interprets this non-ego by positing behind it many 
wills in conflict with his own. (3) In process of time, as his 
mind matures and his experience becomes enlarged, he comes to 
perceive the unity of the non-ego, so that as the world is one 
system, there cannot be many wills, but only one Will accounting 
for it. He comes, further, to realize the immediacy of that Will. 
As Dr. Martineau says, he does away with "deputies," and 
recognizes that he is face to face with one Will active throughout. 
(4) Finally, he substitutes the conception of plan and purpose 
running throughout the whole for changing impulses. Hence, all 
causality in nature is at last seen to reside in one supreme God.^ 
This account is open to serious criticism, and suggests most im- 
portant questions. 

To begin with, is it true to treat the distinction made in 
consciousness between the ego and the non-ego as a sense 
exclusively, or even preeminently, of conflict P^ That conflict 
from time to time arises is certain, but is the sense of that 
conflict the primary and prevailing testimony of early con- 
sciousness? Is not the sense of underlying unity equally 
primitive and influential, to say the least of it, as that of 
occasional conflict? Is not an undue stress laid upon a 
distinction, when it is represented as an opposition? But in 
the second place, even supposing that there is no exaggeration 
about this, why is the source of our belief in God sought 
exclusively in the non-ego? At what stage does the con- 
sciousness come in that the ego is itself an effect, or, at 
all events, is dependent upon a supreme Being ? Further, is the 
idea of God by any means so exclusively an idea of will? 
Is there not here an exaggeration of the influence on the mind 
of the one concept of Causality? Surely the tendency to 
personify, to individualize, has a larger meaning than mere 
ascription of will. It, of course, includes the possession and 
the activity of will, but it includes much more, even if it be 
conceded that strictly moral elements enter at a later stage. 
And, lastly, what becomes of the affectional sources of religion 



> Study of Religion, Book II. chap. i. 

2 In taking this view, Dr. Martineau was probably influenced by Fichte, 
whose position, again, is derived from the Kantian doctrine of Perception. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 77 

to which Dr. Martineau paid a passing tribute at the beginning 
of his exposition? The principle of Causality is very remote 
from aifectional religion. What of that element of primitive 
religion which craves after and, according to the belief involved 
in it, enters upon fellowship with the object of its worship? 
If the answer be made that man, in the first place, becomes 
conscious of a non-ego in conflict with himself, deifies that 
non-ego, and then seeks to pass, by means of reconciliation, from 
conflict to communion, it must be answered that, even if this 
be so, the sense of affinity which desires fellowship is at least 
equally to be taken into account as that of opposition; indeed, 
more so, except in those degraded religions where, owing 
to degeneration and unhappy experience, fear has altogether 
excluded trust. The primary instinct which prompts to 
fellowship involves a sense of unity beneath that of momentary 
opposition. 

This, however, is the deduction which Dr. Martineau offers. 
He completes his account by considering what are the implicit 
attributes of God as Cause. The ultimate results "which are 
yielded by the principle of Causalit}^," are, that "there is one 
universal Cause, the infinite and eternal seat of all power, an 
Omniscient Mind, ordering all things for ends selected with 
perfect wisdom.'^ ^ It might be thought that this account 
represented, not an explanation of the actual growth of 
religion among men, but the contribution made to actual 
religion, by the working of the principle of Causality. 
But this does not appear to be Dr. Martineau's intention, for he 
concludes this first part of his work by saying: "It would be 
interesting to seek, in the history of mankind, for actual 
religions constituted on this type and exhibit their overgrowth 
in one direction, their atrophy in another. But this fasci- 
nating bye-path would withdraw us too far from our main 
track; and we must enter at once upon its next stage, which 
introduces us to a new and independent source of religious 
truth.^'2 i^ would, indeed, have been interesting to learn 
what actual religions Dr. Martineau thought to have been 
constituted on this type. Without his help it is difficult to 
find them. Nature-religions there are in abundance, in which 

1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 417. 2 Ibid. 



78 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

personification plays an almost unrestrained part, and in which 
ethical ideals are practically non-existent. But they yield 
none of the august attributes bound up with the principle of 
Causality, even if that principle is at the heart of the personi- 
fication. On the other hand, men may react from such frank 
naturalism to such forms of thought as are presented in the 
philosophy of Plato or in the Vedantist philosophy of India. 
The latter certainly excludes morality, and likewise personality, 
power, and intellect, from the Divine Being. It is a moot 
point how iar they are recognized, except in his mytho-poetic 
moods, by Plato in any such sense as Dr. Martineau attaches 
to them. 

We now pass to the second and independent condition of 
religion, the moral, "disclosed to us by our conscience.^' ^ ^'In 
the act of Perception," we are told, "we are immediately intro- 
duced to an Other than ourselves that gives us what we feel; 
in the act of Conscience, we are immediately introduced to a 
Higher than ourselves, that gives us what we feel; the exter- 
nality in the one case, the authority in the other, the causality 
in both, are known upon exactly the same terms, and carry the 
same guarantee of their validity .^'2 "Por our true moral life and 
education,'^ it is explained, "we are dependent on the presence 
of some nature higher than our own; without which the mere 
subjective feeling of relative worth among the springs of action 
would rarely pass from knowledge into power. All the Dynamics 
of character are born of inequality, and lie asleep amid unbroken 
equilibrium.^'^ 

To the objection that this only implies "hero-worship," and 
that "we are carried no further by all this than the story 
of our humanity," Dr. Martineau replies as follows: "Be it 
remembered, however, that this law applies, not to our 
particular selves alone, not merely along the ascending steps 
of moral and mental elevation, but just as much, nay even 
with intenser force, at the summit-levels where the culmi- 
nating saints and heroes stand. They too are human; and 
are they then cut off by their position from all dependence? 
On the contrary, to none is such an attitude more 

I Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 1. » Ibid., vol. ii. p. 28. 

» Ibid., vol. ii. p. 30. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 79 

repugnant and even odiously false. That they are what they 
are, because they are carried out of themselves by that which 
transcends their will, is their profoundest consciousness; of all 
dependence theirs is the deepest and most clinging; of all 
faces theirs the most habitually upturned; and the less they 
encounter any higher visible righteousness, the more flows in 
upon them from an invisible Highest of all. And thus, 
through the hierarchy of moral ranks, we are led up 
to a supreme objective. Perfection, without which these grandest 
and loveliest natures could never be."^ We come here upon 
the explanation of moral nature which was elaborated by 
Dr. Martineau in his Types of Ethical Theory, Man is what he 
is because he possesses a number of springs of conduct, which 
range themselves into a hierarchy according to their higher 
or lower moral worth. Moral consciousness is an intuitive 
power of deciding, when any two such springs are present, 
which is the higher, and eventually as the range of life 
becomes so widened that all these springs are called into 
play, a register of the scale is produced, conformity to which 
measures moral goodness. The higher and nobler springs of 
action, we are now told, are revealed in the lives of saints and 
heroes, and by means of such men the consciousness of their 
presence and the resolution to prefer the highest are awakened 
in men of inferior mold. But as the highest men can find 
no higher than themselves on earth, they are obliged to look 
upward to find their inspiration and strength in God. Sub- 
sequently Dr. Martineau terms this theory ^^a momentary 
concession.'^ He says: "This momentary concession I must 
now withdraw, large as the operation is of some leader's mind 
upon the led, it is by no means coextensive with the advance 
of character; and many a struggle upwards, whether by 
patient steps or by some flight of conversion, takes 
place, where no visible master-touch infuses the needful energy ."2 
It is a pity the concession was made, if only for a moment. A 
community of spiritual nature is revealed in the power of the 
highest character to evoke a response from ordinary men. 
What is implicit in the lower is made explicit in the higher. 
The basis should have been laid in this community, instead of 

1 Stvdy of Religion, vol. ii. p. 34. 2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 35. 



80 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

treating, in the first instance, the lower as dependent upon the 
higher in a purely human relationship, leaving the higher to 
press upward into a totally new relationship to God, which has 
not been taken into account from the first. The treatment of the 
testimony of the moral consciousness never recovers from this 
defect at the start, which seems to have had a deeper root in 
Dr. Martineau's mind than a mere temporary necessity of 
argument. 

The moral attributes of God considered, not merely as 
Cause, but as moral perfection, are said by Dr. Martineau to 
be three; namely, (1) Benevolence toward sentient beings, 
(2) Justice toward moral beings, (3) Amity toward like 
minds. ^ But again, there is the weakness of abstract treat- 
ment. Dr. Martineau does not investigate the testimony of 
the religious consciousness as such, to begin with. Hence, 
throughout the book, he never asks the question. What is the 
relationship to God of which the religious mind is conscious? 
Thus the three attributes, benevolence, justice, and amity, are 
left unexplained. Had the testimony of the religious conscious- 
ness been examined, the fact would have been brought out at 
once, that the relationship of which Christian believers are con- 
scious is the Fatherhood of God. Then these three attributes 
would have been seen to be the natural outcome of that Father- 
hood. And another would have been added, the most charac- 
teristically Christian of all, namely, the grace which raises 
men to fitness for the fellowship of God and satisfies them 
with it. 

Lastly, individual men do not stand alone. Hence fol- 
lows the discovery of "a new fact, that" God "stands in one 
relation to all of us, giving the same warnings, ordaining the 
same strife, inviting the same affections, breathing the same 
inspirations. Hence the knowledge of Him and the life in 
Him emerge from the level of a solitary faith, and become 
a principle of union interpenetrating the social attachments, 
interpreting their intensity, and steeping them in new and 
fairer meanings.^^^ Thus the idea is reached "of our united 
human life as constituting a hingdom of God"^ Was the 

1 Stvdy of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 42-49. * Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 49, 50. 

» Ibid., vol. ii. p. 50. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 81 

idea of the community, and of that community as a kingdom 
of God, originally reached by any such deliberate reflection? 
Surely common acts of worship and of human fellowship 
came before the development of strictly individual religion; 
and a mutual sympathy organized men as a kingdom of God, 
and not the comparison of experiences between individual 
souls. In deserting the affectional and intuitive source of 
common religion. Dr. Martineau has passed out of the field of 
historical religion altogether. Men had the sense of community 
before they reasoned it out, and it was bound up with affectional 
ties which alone rendered their lives religious, as well as social 
and political. 

It is a somewhat violent transition to pass from Martineau to 
the proof of Christianity offered by the Ritschlian School. 
"Widely contrasted, however, as is the latter system, it affords an 
equally striking illustration of the effect of undue abstraction 
upon Christian Evidences. 

As is weU known, the leading characteristic of Eitschl 
and of his followers is that they attempt to expound and 
explain Christianity exclusively by means of the conception of 
the Kingdom of God. According to all the members of the 
school, the fundamental mistake of Christian theology has lain 
in its adoption of the Logos-Doctrine as the principal means for 
the interpretation of Christianity, with the consequence that it 
has thereby turned Christianity into a means for the theoretic 
explanation of the world. Such an attempted explanation is 
held to be beyond the scope of religion, and to be futile. The 
essential meaning of the Christian religion is to be found in its 
relation to the needs of the religious consciousness, and for this 
relation the conception of the kingdom of God, as set forth by 
our Lord, is of supreme importance. This changed point of view 
affects not merely the essence of the Christian religion, but its 
proof. This latter is to be found in the fact that it — and it 
alone — ^meets the needs of spiritual consciousness, and the evi- 
dence of this is to be found, not in speculative thought, but in the 
testimony of history. 

It is necessary to consider this proof as it is elaborated by 
Kaftan, the more strictly evidential writer of the Ritschlian 
School. 



82 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

The first part of his work, entitled The Truth of 
the Christian Religion, is devoted to an elaborate criticism of 
the old methods by which Christianity was set forth and de- 
fended as a world-philosophy by the help of Platonic and Aristo- 
telian conceptions. Having demolished any pretended proof 
resting upon such foundations. Kaftan proceeds in the second 
part to develop his own proof of the truth of Christianity. 
Man, he argues, has two elements in his being — the intellectual 
and the practical; it is not, however, the intellectual which is 
foremost, but the practical. ^ Will, striving, effort are first 
on the scene in a child's life. Intellect only awakes subse- 
quently, and is always subservient to will, which seeks practical 
ends. The question at the outset is, "whether in the last resort 
man is to be interpreted and understood from the point of 
view of the world, or the world from the point of view of 
man."2 Only if the latter alternative be true can Christianity 
be proved; but directly that alternative is adopted, the will 
and its pursuit are of primary importance, not the intellect 
with its reflection. Man can be explained only by the ends 
which he pursues; and only in the light of those ends can 
his knowledge be organized into a consistent whole.^ The 
ends which man pursues are "writ large" in the development and 
history of the community to which he belongs."* 

From all this it becomes apparent that man is so con- 
structed by nature that he necessarily seeks for himself a 
Chief Good.^ But a Chief Good is not entirely realized in 
actual experience.^ Its reality cannot be demonstratively 
proved. It cannot be brought to that touchstone of ex- 
perience under the Categories of the Understanding, which 
is the test of ordinary knowledge. Speculation outsoars it, 
experience lags behind it. The reality of the idea of the 
Chief Good must be verified, so far as it can be verified 
at aU, by an act of faith in its value, and by the fact that human 
life, as we know it, would fall into incoherence and incompetence 
without it.'^ 



1 The Truth of the Christian Religion, Second Division, chap. i. 

2 Ibid,, vol. ii. p. 154. ' Ibid., vol. ii. p. 182, et seq. 

* Ibid., vol. ii. p. 182, et seq, » Ibid., vol. ii. p. 219, et seq. 

• Ibid., vo^. i. p. 328. ^ ibid., vol. ii. pp. 384, 385. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 83 

To this practical need the doctrine of the kingdom of 
God corresponds. *^e shall have to prove/' says Kaftan, "that 
the Christian idea of the kingdom of God as the Chief Good 
of humanity answers to the requirements which must be 
made'of the true, rational, absolutely valid idea of the Chief 
Good.^ There are two features of that Chief Good/' In the 
first place, it is supra-mundane. "If we ask what sort of 
Chief Good it is for which the reason of man, as it is recog- 
nizable in history, testifies, the first answer is to the effect that 
such a Chief Good is not to be found in the world."^ It must 
secure "perfect and unconditional satisfaction for the human 
soul," and this is impossible by means of earthly life. Hence 
all systems of speculative philosophy bear witness to this 
fact, since they have "quite spontaneously assumed a religious 
character."^ Hence, "as soon as culture has suj0&ciently 
developed, a piety, a species of faith emerges, which has 
simply the religious idea, as such, as its religious motive, 
namely, the insufficiency of the world, and the longing 
thereby awakened for a life above the world, for divine life.""* 
The witness of this fact cannot be set aside as worthless ; for we 
cannot bring ourselves to contemplate the historical development 
of humanity as something that should not be."^ "Accordingly, 
the rational idea of the Chief Good must undoubtedly be con- 
ceived in the sense of religion."^ 

A second feature, however, becomes equally apparent. 
The idea of the Chief Good must be conceived as a product 
of historical development, and, therefore, as positive."^ It 
must, therefore, be a moral good, and it must be shown that 
moral development forms the very kernel of history. "That 
rational idea of the Chief Good which we are in search of is 
consequently the idea which combines the religious and the 
moral points of view in the closest manner with each other. 
Such an idea we have in the Christian idea of the supra- 
mundane kingdom of God, which has the kingdom of moral 
righteousness on earth as its intra-mundane correlative."® 

1 The Truth of the Christian Religion, vol. ii. p. 325. 

2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 328. » Ibid., vol. ii. p. 325. 

* Ibid., vol. ii. p. 336. « Ibid., vol. ii. p. 339. 

• Ibid., vol. ii. p. 341. 7 ibid., vol. ii. pp. 338-341. 
« Ibid., vol. ii. p. 366. 



84 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

This idea has been introduced by the Christian Church. There 
can be no completion of moral life without it. Therefore the 
exact sense of the Christian kingdom of God is necessary to fill 
out that human conception of the Chief Good, without which the 
history of man cannot be explained.^ Hence "we infer that the 
Christian idea of the kingdom of God is the rational idea of the 
Chief Goodr^ 

"But," Kaftan continues, "this kingdom of God must be 
a divine proclamation"; it can only have been given by a 
divine revelation.^ "Consequently the postulate of a supra- 
mundane kingdom of God, in which lies the goal of human 
history, is simply the postulate of a special revelation of that 
kingdom of God in history."^ Hence "the proof of the truth 
of Christianity is the proof of the reasonableness and absolute- 
ness of the faith reposed in Christian revelation."^ By faith 
in Christ we do not put ourselves in opposition to reason, but 
by faith we attain first of all the unity of our personal life, 
and also the consummation of our reason."^ All this, how- 
ever, puts Christianity beyond the possibility of demonstra- 
tive proof. There is no power to compel or to persuade to 
absolute unanimity as to what constitutes the Chief Good. 
The development of history shows how the idea has been 
revealed and has wrought, and that development cannot be 
condemned. But no pudgment as to the nature and reality 
of the Chief Good can be reached "without a judgment of 
reason, which is always, in part, an expression of personal 
conviction."'^ 

It must be recognized that this account contributes elements 
of the greatest importance to a complete statement of Christian 
Evidences. It remedies that neglect of the vital relation of 
Christianity to the spiritual life of mankind which has been 
the most serious fault of ordinary Apologetic. The recognition 
of the divine method of evolution, and of its extension to 
the spiritual life of man, necessitates our regarding human 
life, whether of the individual or of society, as a gradual 

—7^ 

1 The Truth of the Christian Religion, vol. ii. p. 325 et seq. 
» Ibid., vol. ii. p. 377. » Ibid., vol. ii. p. 382. 

* Ibid., vol. ii. p. 383. » Ibid., vol. ii. p. 384. 

• Ibid., vol. ii. p. 390. ' Ibid., vol. ii. p. 193. 



INADEQUACY OF SYSTEMS OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 85 

unfolding, which seeks to realize a satisfying end. In this 
respect also what are called "judgments of value" are of great 
importance. For Christian Evidences must needs lay greater 
stress on the contention that human life can neither be 
satisfied, maintained, nor explained, if the Christian faith be 
set aside. By resting Christian Evidences upon the historical 
facts of religion, and upon those facts in their relation to the 
satisfaction of spiritual life, in the only way in which, as we 
know it, such satisfaction is possible, there is presented one of the 
most important, perhaps the most important, line of Christian 
defence. 

Yet there are serious shortcomings in this account, arising 
again from the undue abstraction from which Christian Evi- 
dences have found it so difficult to keep free. 

In the first place, the whole argument depends upon the 
extreme separation made by Kant between the Pure and the 
Practical Eeason; between the mind seeking and organizing 
knowledge and the mind willing to seek ends. Even if the 
priority of impulse over reflection, and the primacy of the will 
over the intellect, be granted, yet this by no means entitles us to 
deny to theoretic Eeason a real place and a legitimate function 
in world-interpretation. Even if the experiences arising from 
action come first, they may, and do, provide material for a 
purely reflective process, which has its own independent task 
to fulfill. 

Similarly there is, in the next place, too sharp a separation 
between nature and man. Nature is looked at too exclusively 
as being ia contrast with man, or as the mere scene of man's 
activities, and not sufficiently as a whole summed up ia, and ex- 
plained by, man. It is necessary both to recognize and also to 
transcend the distinction between the two. It is certainly im- 
possible to explain religion, save in the light of the historical 
progress, the practical ends and the spiritual needs of mankind. 
But these are facts, not merely for the faith which accepts them 
on pain of dissolving human nature and defeating human prog- 
ress. They are material of the highest importance to be handed 
over to the reason when it seeks speculatively to determine what 
is the nature and constitution of the universe in which these 
spiritual facts play such an important part. 



S6 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

The union between the theoretic and the practical may perhaps 
be found by bringing into account an element which Kaftan, in 
common with the rest of the Eitschlian school, has entirely 
omitted, namely, the affectional aspects of religion. Neither re- 
ligion in general, nor Christianity in particular, can be completely 
explained either by means of the speculative thought which seeks 
a theoretic explanation of the world, or by the practical demand 
for a Chief Good above the world and beyond the reach of mortal 
life. Even the two in combination are insufficient. An additional 
element has been left out — ^that of religion as the consciousness of 
certain definite relations to a present Divine Being, at once sup- 
plying material for an explanation of the world, and a ground of 
confidence in the reality of the necessary Chief Good. Man 
neither explores the universe unaided, as Pale/s traveler in- 
spected the watch on which he chanced, nor does he accept the 
tidings of the kingdom of God entirely because his life would be 
reduced to imbecility or despair if he rejected them. Beneath 
both these is wha^; he believes to be the experience of immediate 
relationship to that Divine Other than himself, who is yet — in 
some sense — ^his true self. Out of that experience he explains the 
constitution of the world, which for him, at least, finds its unity 
and its climax in himself. Out of it, also, he draws the assurance 
that the good which alone can satisfy him is real because of the 
goodness of that God whose presence he realizes in his own inner 
life, and whose experienced goodness casts light both upon his own 
path and also upon the historic path which humanity has trod. 
Kitschlianism must be supplemented and corrected in all these 
ways before it can become a trustworthy guide to the reasons why 
men believe Christianity to be true. 



CHAPTER III 

TEE TASK SET TO CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE 
PRESENT TIME 

THE general survey, which has now been completed, of the 
history of Christian Evidences, and of the conditions of 
thought and sentiment prevailing in our own times, 
suffices to show how greatly enlarged is the present task of 
Christian Evidences as compared with that laid upon them in. 
any previous period of Christian thought. 

We have seen, further, that the systems of Christian Evidences 
hitherto recognized are disqualified for discharging this task. 
And for three reasons. In the first place, because of their 
mediaeval inheritance; because of the abstract conceptions and 
divisions which have appeared unchallenged since they were re- 
ceived from the Schoolmen. In the second place, because they 
have been stereotyped by the endeavor to justify Christianity in 
conformity with, rather than by criticism of, the conceptions, 
the assumptions, and the temper which have prevailed in modem 
physical science. An excessive prejudice against the aims and 
spirit of physical science has not been accompanied by a search- 
ing criticism of its postulates and methods in order to show 
that what is represented as hostile to religion will not stand the 
test of reflection when the whole of the Eeality is taken into 
account. And, in the third place, because they have been 
rendered out of date by recent discoveries of all kinds, and by 
the changed point of view which those discoveries have brought 
about. 

These criticisms are, in the main, accepted at the present time 
by the more thoughtful theologians of every school. 

The inquiry has further shown what must be the main 
.. .., 87 



88 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

line taken by any satisfactory attempt to establish the truth 
of the Christian religion. It has revealed that in propor- 
tion as the religious spirit has been strong and deep, the testi- 
mony of the spiritual consciousness itself has been mainly relied 
upon, whether to arouse or to justify Christian belief. And 
not merely so; it has been seen in what difficulties Christian 
Evidences have been involved directly men have departed 
from this primary position. Eevelation has then become the 
deliverance of abstract propositions about God, man, and the 
world. From that standpoint it has been difficult to show how 
these propositions have been introduced by God at all into 
the mind of man by the method of revelation. Assuming 
that method, its results have been acknowledged to rest upon 
a foundation of inferior certainty to the knowledge acquired 
by sense. The outcome of thus weakening alike the nature, 
the authority, and the proof of Eevelation, has been the 
strengthening of agnostic doctrines, which have denied both 
the power of God to reveal Himself and the power of human 
faculties to apprehend the revelation. These consequences 
have befallen all explanations which have begun by throwing 
the human faculties altogether out of the life of God, until it 
has needed a miracle, the proof of which must necessarily be 
less than absolute, to put them into relationship with Him once 
more. 

In order to prove that Christianity is true, two things are 
necessary. First of all, its faith and facts must be shown to have 
a vital place in the order of Eeality considered as a connected 
spiritual and rational system. In the second, it must be estab- 
lished, not only that this faith and these facts are a part of the 
system, but that they reveal its meaning by manifesting and 
making good the relations in which, and the ends for which, the 
whole system exists. 

What is meant by proving this? Many understand it to in- 
volve simply a demonstration that the Christian view of the 
universe is highly probable. They found themselves on the 
assertion of Butler, that for men "probability is the very guide 
of life.^'^ It would be absurd to say that there is no place in 
a system of Christian Evidences for estimates of probabilities. 

1 Analogy. Introduction. 



THE TASK SET TO CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 89 

Yet surely if the proof of Christianity be intended to show 
that its objects and supposed experiences are in the highest 
degree probable, this falls entirely short of the characteristic 
testimony of Christian faith. Upon a convinced believer in 
Christ, the impression produced by such an attitude is that 
it is in almost fatal disagreement with the temper of 
mind which is habitual with him. And the more saintly 
he is, the more will he feel this to be the case. Surely 
that cannot be the highest aim and the best method 
of Christian proof which almost affronts the most Christian 
minds. 

Closer examination will perhaps reveal that a confusion 
exists between two perfectly distinct tasks of Christian 
Evidences. This may be illustrated by our relationship to 
the external world. When the occurrence of any particular 
event is in question, the performance of any particular action, 
or the particrdar motive which inspired it, evidence is sought 
to show that the reality of the event, the action, or the motive, 
is in the highest degree probable. Our evidence of that which 
is beyond our own consciousness falls short of immediate cer- 
tainty, though often almost imperceptibly. But this is not 
the way in which the reality of the external world, as a whole, 
and the independent existence of our fellow men are dealt 
with. Self-consciousness itself depends upon the truth both 
of the one and of the other. Even the idealism of Berkeley 
is forced to secure the independence, and, in that respect, the 
externality of the world, by representing it as the product, 
not of individual consciousness, but of the consciousness of 
God. All that we can do with this original belief is to 
assume the consciousness implied in it, carefully to describe 
it, to trace the relationships which are manifest in it, and, so 
far as possible, to set its factors in their proper place as 
parts of a consistent whole. If the initial act of faith fails, 
the basis of the whole is gone. No compulsion, even by 
argument, is then possible. The belief is original, and ulti- 
mately finds its justification in this, that only on its basis 
does life fall into a whole which can be rationally explained, and 
in which purposive action is possible. 

So it is with our consciousness of God, and our belief in 



90 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Ohristianity. Any particular event;, or any particular explana- 
tion of an event, can at the utmost only be proved to be in 
the highest degree probable. When, for example, men attempt 
to establish the particular facts of our Lord's life, whether 
common or miraculous, they are in the position of ordinary 
historians. Their only course is to establish the probability 
of these facts. So, again, when men speculate as to the reasons 
why the universe is constituted in this way and not in that, 
or why God did this rather than that, they are within the 
sphere where only varying degrees of probability can be attained. 
Such facts may fall into a series, and on behalf of each and 
of the whole of them successive arguments may be found, which 
combine to yield what is called a ^^cumulative proof" of 
Ohristianity. 

But all this, even when taken together, does not constitute 
exactly what is meant by the Christianity of which the 
Christian believer is conscious, and in regard to which his 
attitude is one, not of estimating probabilities, but of the 
highest degree of certitude. He has — if his own account 
be taken — a specific consciousness of divine relations, as direct 
and as well defined as those of which he is conscious in regard 
either to the external world or to his fellow men. Just as in 
the case of that experience of the world and of his fellows 
which began upon the breast of his mother, so, though in a 
yet fuller measure, this consciousness gives a meaning to life 
and the world. That meaning is seen by his reason and 
seized upon by his will as giving a clue to the ends he should 
seek and the methods he should pursue. The meaning which 
is perceived in this consciousness is confidently held to be 
there, because it has been seen; and the more confidently 
since it causes all things to fall into line as parts of a spiritual 
and rational system; since, further, it both manifests and 
promotes the end which gives unity and satisfaction to his 
life. The consciousness is there. It is given. It is not built 
up by means of arguments. In the most typical cases it feels 
no need of arguments, and is, perhaps, as much at a loss to 
produce them, when called upon, as most men would be if 
summoned to give reasons for believing in the existence of an 
external world, or of their fellow men. The consciousness is 



THE TASK SET TO CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 91 

accounted to be verified by the illumination, the satisfaction, 
the practical power and inspiration, which are contained within 
it and nowhere else. 

There is, of course, one important distinction between belief 
in Christianity and belief in an external world. The latter 
is universal, while the former is not. The importance and ex- 
planation of this difference will be considered later on. Mean- 
while, all that needs to be said is that the lack of universality 
of Christian belief does not affect the way in which it is held 
by those who enjoy it, and that unless Christianity can be jus- 
tified by means of the consciousness of Christians there seems to 
be no other way remaining of establishing it. The contents 
of Christian consciousness must be set in relationship to all 
other tracts of human consciousness, and it must be shown 
that to depart from Christianity means, at every point of the 
departure, to lose something of the full power to explain 
human life and the world. In this power to explain the whole 
will be found, if anywhere, the final verification of Christian 
faith. That faith must not, therefore, even for its own sake, 
be withheld from discharging this office in regard to the whole 
realm of truth. 

In this respect it must be contended that Eitschl has 
strengthened the position of Agnosticism by the absolute 
separation which he has set up between what he terms 
respectively, theoretic and religious knowledge. ^^Theology,'' 
he says, ^Tias performed its task when, guided by the Chris- 
tian idea of God and the conception of men^s blessedness in the 
kingdom of God, it exhibits completely and clearly, both as a 
whole and in particular, the Christian view of the world and 
of human life, together with the necessity which belongs to 
the interdependent relations between its component elements. 
It is incompetent for it to enter upon either a direct or an 
indirect proof of the Christian revelation by seeking to show 
that it agrees with philosophical or juridical views of the 
world ; for to such Christianity simply stands opposed. . . . 
To subordinate the ethical to the idea of the cosmical is 
always characteristic of a heathen view of the world, and 
to its jurisdiction Christianity is not amenable; before it, 
Christianity will never succeed in justifying itself. Even 



92 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

when such an explanation of the world starts from an idea 
of God, it offers no guarantee that it can prove the truth of 
Christianity." 1 

The point of view adopted in these pages is in agree- 
ment with the contentions of Kitschl, in so far as they insist that 
the first condition of the proof of Christianity is to be found 
in the clear indication of the contents of the Christian con- 
sciousness, and in the exhibition that those contents are 
necessary in order to satisfy the human spirit, and to give a 
rational view of its position in the world. Apart from the 
presuppositions of Christianity, it must be shown that the 
position of man becomes, not only unintelligible, but contra- 
dictory. The criticism is further justified, in so far as it 
protests against the subordination of the ethical to the 
cosmical. This, as has been shown, was the mistake into 
which such writers of Christian Evidences as Paley have 
fallen, by conducting their argument on a cosmical level, 
without ever rising to consider the spiritual constitution of 
human nature, as shown in the spiritual relationships into 
which men enter with God and their fellows. But Eitschl falls 
into error when he presses his point of view until he makes 
Christianity to stand in absolute opposition to all philosophical 
views of the world.^ 

In the subsequent course of his reasoning, Eitschl is 
himself obliged fitfully to break down the absolute opposition 
which he has set up between religious and theoretic knowl- 
edge. For example, he notes the presence of religious 
elements in Greek philosophy. This he accounts for as 
follows: "In these cases the combination of heterogeneous 
kinds of knowledge — the religious and the scientific — is 
beyond all doubt. And it is to be explained by the fact that 
philosophers, who, through their scientific observation of 
nature, had destroyed the foundations of the popular faith, 
sought to obtain satisfaction for their religious instincts by 



1 The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Redemption (English transla- 
tion), pp. 24, 25. 

2 The relation of Christianity to juridical views stands upon a somewhat 
different footing, and need not detain us here. It has been discussed by the 
author in his work on The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, chaps, iv. and v. 



THE TASK SET TO CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 93 

anotlier patli."^ This really means that a man can never ex- 
clude his religious instincts from his philosophy, and that, 
therefore, it must be deeply colored by their testimony. ISTor 
did the introduction of religious interests into their philosophy 
by the Greek thinkers necessarily vitiate their work in philosophy. 
The reason why that work is incomplete from the philo- 
sophical standpoint and unsatisfactory from that of the 
Christian consciousness, is that the testimony of the religious 
instincts in the time and place of the Greek philosophers was 
imperfectly developed, and that, therefore, the religious as- 
sumptions which color their philosophy are incomplete and 
insufficient to satisfy the many-sided spiritual problem with 
which they had to deal. 

Further, Eitschl is himself unable totally to separate 
between theoretic and religious judgments. Eeligious judg- 
ments are, as he calls them, "value-judgments," that is, 
judgments which are justified, not by scientific proof, but 
by their worth to the completeness and satisfaction of human 
life. But he is obliged to admit that value- judgments enter, 
to a certain extent, into philosophical reasoning, that unless there 
were some kind of interest in the matter men would not trouble 
themselves about it.^ The distinction is, therefore, made be- 
tween so-called concomitant and independent value-judgments. 
^'The former are operative and necessary in all theoretical 
cognition, as in technical observation and combination. But all 
perceptions of moral ends or moral hindrances are independent 
value-judgments."^ 

It becomes clear, therefore, that there is no absolute 
division between the two classes of judgments. In seek- 
ing the truest scientific judgments there must be a certain sub- 
jective demand for satisfaction urging men to sustain the 
labor and sometimes to encounter the risks necessary to 
attain to them. On the other hand, there must be a 
certain theoretic element in the independent value-judg- 
ments. The judgments which religion passes must have 
their place in furnishing our completed knowledge of 
the real nature of the world. They necessarily involve judg- 



1 JusHficaiion and Reconciliation, p. 208. 

2 Ibid., p. 204. » Ibid., pp. 204, 205, 



94 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

ments, be they well or ill-founded, as to the nature of the 
world. 

Eitschl, in urging the superiority of the moral argument 
for the existence of God over the ontological or cosmological, 
explains his position as follows: "In theoretical knowledge," 
he says, "spirit treats nature as something which exists for 
it; while in the practical sphere of the will, too, it treats 
nature as something which is directly a means of the realiza- 
tion of the common ethical end which forms the final end of 
the world. The cognitive impulse and the will both take this 
course without regard to the fact that nature is subject to 
quite other laws than those which spirit obeys, that it is 
independent of spirit, and that it forms a restraint on spirit, 
and so far keeps it in a certain way in dependence on itself. 
Hence we must conclude either that the estimate which spirit, 
as a power superior to nature, forms of its own worth — in 
particular of the estimate which it forms of moral fellowship, 
which transcends nature — is a baseless fancy, or that the view 
taken of spirit is in accordance with truth and with the 
supreme law which is valid for nature as well. If that be so, 
then its ground must lie in a divine will, which creates the 
world with spiritual life as its final end. To accept the idea 
of God in this way is, as Kant observes, practical faith and 
not an act of theoretical cognition. While, therefore, the 
Christian religion is thereby proved to be in harmony with 
reason, it is always with the reservation that knowledge of 
God embodies itself in judgments which differ in kind from 
those of theoretical science.'^ ^ Does not the fact that the 
"cognitive impulse and the will" take their course "without 
regard to the fact that nature is subject to quite other laws 
than those which spirit obeys," suggest a doubt whether the 
mutual independence and opposition between nature and 
spirit are as final as they seem? Is even the surface contra- 
diction as real as it looks ? And in so far as it is real, may it 
not be established in the interest of spirit itself, and in order 
to provoke the spirit to overcome it, and to realize that 
deeper harmony in which nature serves the ends of spirit? 
Certainly if we are to justify this action of spirit in cognition 

i Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 224, 225. 



THE TASK SET TO CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 95 

and will we cannot regard it as self-enclosed, but must treat this 
characteristic activity as throwing light on the inmost meaning 
of the universe, and as showing it to be so bound together in 
one system, as to serve the purposes of spiritual life. Hence the 
Christian consciousness must be vindicated by showing how it 
completes and supplies the means of interpreting all other 
provinces of reality. 

We are now in a position to set forth the course which, ac- 
cording to the view taken in these pages, Christian Evidences 
should take. 

I. In the first place, Christian Evidences must begin with 
a statement of the Religious Datum. Its content as a pro- 
fessed revelation and experience must be ascertained. The 
best means of defending it is to let it speak for itself. Even 
if this be not so, the only way of undertaking its defence is to 
place in clear light what it is that we have to defend. Above 
all, Christianity claims to be a revelation to, and in human 
consciousness of, certain relations in which God stands to man. 
What these are must be investigated. In order to this, 
Christianity must be taken as a whole and at the full, as it 
first manifested itself. Its main features must be determined. 
What is contained in our description of it must be shown to 
be its kernel, and not mere husk; to be part of its abiding 
meaning, and not an accommodation to the age in which it 
appeared. 

II. In the second place, Christianity must be shown to be 
the supreme expression and satisfaction of spiritual life. The 
relation of Christianity to preparatory and to other religions 
must be traced; the natural history of religion in relation to 
the validity of the spiritual consciousness being here dealt 
with. The connection of Christianity with all other tracts of 
human consciousness must be set out, and it must be shown 
not only to be consistent with them, but to complete and 
explain them. It must be shown thus that the Christian 
consciousness in its highest and completest form is verified by, 
and in its turn verifies, history as the divine unfolding of an 
aU-comprehending world-end; an unfolding which, while it is 
incomplete, carries within it the prophecy of final realization. 
It must be made good that Christianity stands in vital 



•96 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

connection with the world, as consununating it; as bringing its 
end into consciousness, in and through the divine relationships 
it reveals. It must be delivered from the suspicion of being 
accidental because it is remedial, and it must be shown that in 
order to be remedial it must be a vital part of the life which it 
redeems. Thus Christianity must be shown, not merely to be 
compatible with other truth, or to supplement other truth 
where reason fails, or to be a real world lying outside the 
world of which natural knowledge takes account, but to be the 
final and full manifestation of the Spirit by, in, and for which 
the universe exists. 

III. In the next place, the value-judgments of the Christian 
spirit must be dealt with. It must be shown that they are 
capable of affording an explanation of the world, and the only 
explanation which is consistent with its most important facts. 
This must be done by exhibiting the spiritual unity of the world, 
its system, and its organic relation to the spirit which becomes 
manifest in it. 

Arising from this, it must be shown that the theistic basis 
which Christianity provides is the necessary foundation for a 
world standing, throughout its system, in such relations to 
spiritual life. In this connection it is more important to settle 
what is the nature of the universe, than what was the method 
of its origin. Probably it will never be possible, under human 
limitations, to arrive at a complete philosophy of creation, for 
we are men and not God. Christian Evidences may therefore 
be most profitably employed in making good the divine and 
spiritual nature of the world, and the relations to God revealed 
in it. It must be made clear that the Divine Spirit who is 
the ground and explanation of men is the ground and explana- 
tion of the nature which is one with man. Only that which is 
adequate to the explanation of man is adequate to the explana- 
tion of nature. 

IV. AU other principles of world-explanation must be shown 
to be partial abstractions, which are incompetent to ex- 
plain the whole. Only the full expression of spiritual con- 
sciousness in Christianity avoids this limitation, and is 
all-comprehensive. 

In particular, the objections of Agnosticism must be 



THE TASK SET TO CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 97 

examined, and the Christian explanation of the world must be 
vindicated as against these objections, whether they arise from 
despair or from a false theory of knowledge and of the nature of 
reality. This vindication must be accompanied by the admission 
that the ends of the universe are wider, and the divine method 
more immanent, than human consciousness can adequately 
represent to itself. 

V. Those phenomena of the world which seem to be in contra- 
diction to Christianity must be considered. In so far as these 
are real, they must be shown to be either explicable in terms of 
Christianity, or so subordinate that while no solution may yet 
be possible, they cannot be held to invalidate our main 
conclusions. 

VI. The Christian account of the divine dealings with man, 
especially in redemption, must be considered, with a view to 
establish the fact that while they transcend nature, as ordinarily 
understood, they are in vital connection with all that has been 
made manifest of God elsewhere. 

YII. The nature of the Christian doctrine of God, and the way 
by which it has been reached, must be examined, in order to show 
that it does not conflict with reason. 

Such is the general course marked out for our subsequent 
inquiry. 

It will be convenient to treat of these subjects in two parts; 
the first dealing with the meaning and place of Christianity as 
the absolute religion, and the second with its proof. 

LOFC. 



BOOK II 

CHRISTIANITY AS THE ABSOLUTE 
RELIGION 



CHAPTER I 

TEE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

WHAT is the content of the Christian Eeligion? 
This is the first question to be asked and 
answered in dealing with the problem of Chris- 
tian Evidences. These, like every other subject of human 
inquiry, must begin with some datum. There is something/ 
that is to say, which they take for granted, and have to 
explain and justify. What is it which in the case of Christian 
Evidences is given to be explained? The only satisfactory 
answer is, that this is Christ — His place and influence in the 
world, and what is made manifest thereby. This includes, on 
the one hand, the explanation of Christ in the world, and on 
the other, the explanation of the world with Christ in it. 
Thus the question becomes : What is revealed as to the nature 
of the whole universe of reality by the presence and place of 
Christ within it? The two elements must be kept well in 
view. But, first of all, there is Christ Himself, as He is 
revealed in His own personal history, in His direct influence 
upon the life and progress, upon the spirit and experience of 
men, in the measure and meaning of His affinity with the 
characteristic faiths and strivings of mankind. Anything less 
than the whole, which includes all these elements, comes short 
at some vital point of the Christianity which has to be 
explained. The Person, His influence. His relation to what 
is fundamental in human nature — these are the three elements 
of the complete manifestation of what Christ is. To leave out 
of consideration any one of these is to omit something that is 
essential. To examine any part of this whole simply in the 
form of a theoretic doctrine is to weaken its force by abstracting 

101 



103 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

from the spiritual experience of manliind wrought out in history, 
out of which the formal doctrine proceeds. 

The first step, therefore, in a satisfactory presentation of 
Christian Evidences, is carefully to ascertain what is distinctive 
of Christ Himself. This means, above all, the determination 
of the content of His own spiritual consciousness, as it is 
presented to us in the records which have come down to us; 
establishing, so far as is necessary for this purpose, their 
authenticity. It involves, further, the establishment and 
explanation of certain facts about Him, without which His own 
consciousness could not have created His influence in the 
world. It includes, further, the investigation of that influence 
in order to seize upon what is characteristic of it, and to interpret 
the doctrines about Him and His work which were developed 
in order to describe and explain the characteristic influence 
He exerted. It necessitates one additional step; namely, the 
inquiry as to h&w the influence of Christ, thus set forth in 
doctrines about Him, stands related to the general texture of 
human consciousness, and to the deliverances of the human spirit 
working in apparent independence of the history and the Spirit 
of Christ. 

In modern times, at least, no satisfactory beginning of Chris- 
tian Evidences can be made from any other starting-point than 
this. It is the great service rendered by the Eitschlian school 
that, with certain grave defects in their treatment of Christ and 
Christianity, as well as of the relation of both to the world, 
its teachers have emphasized the cardinal necessity of founding 
the truth of Christianity upon the relation of Christ to the 
Christian consciousness, and through it to the general spiritual 
life of mankind. 

This starting-point, proper in itself, will be felt to be the 
more necessary in proportion as the unique place of Christ in 
the evolution and history of religion is realized, and also the 
unique nature of the bond which unites believers to Him. 
How unique that bond is such thinkers as Martineau recognize 
as expressly as do the more orthodox. In his earlier days 
he wrote, ^^Whoever sees in Christ, not an original source of 
truth and goodness, but only a product of something else, 
is destitute of the attitude of mind constituting religious 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 103 

discipleship ; which implies, not that we have been convinced 
by the reasoning of an equal, but that we have been subdued 
by the authority, and possessed by the intuitions of a higher 
mind."* In later years he wrote, "Supreme in the hierarchy 
of inspiration, standing unique at its culminating point, 
identical in filial will with the Infinite Father's perfection, 
is Jesus Christ, the moral incarnation of the love of God."^ 
Still later he declared, "I have no faith in a religious future 
for those who renounce their allegiance to that personality, 
whether to try a philosophic Theism or a bare Ethical Ideal 
without him/'3 

The first question is, therefore, that of the nature of the 
religion which Christ embodies and conveys. What is it ? How 
does He convey it ? 

I. In the first place, Christ gives a final theology to the 
world, as the expression of a perfect religion. That His 
theology is final, that His religion is perfect, may be taken 
as generally agreed. If either is abandoned, it is not in order 
to find a better, but because religion is pronounced an illusion 
and theological conclusions are declared to be beyond the 
reach of human faculties properly exercised. The next point 
is equally important, namely, that it is by means of the 
perfect religion that Christ announces the final theology. 
The whole of His theological teaching is expressed through 
a religious realization of, a response to, a manifestation 
of, certain divine relationships which He describes. His teach- 
ing. His outward life. His inner spiritual experience, constitute 
an indissoluble unity, to which the inner experience is the key. 
In every other case there is some disparity between the two 
sides. Eeligious instincts may find little consistent expression 
in doctrine, may even diverge widely in substance from the 
dogmatic forms in which they are expressed. Still more may 
theological teaching become theoretic and abstract; derived 
from the exercise of the logical understanding rather than 
from the deeper spiritual and moral sources of the heart. 
The fact that theological science has so often broken away 



1 Rationale, 3rd ed. (1845), 

2 Letter to R. H. Button (1885), Life, voL ii. p. 80. 
a Written in 1888, Life, voL ii. p. 218. 



104 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

from such sources, and even neglected to correct itself by their 
help, has frequently rendered it artificial and unsatisfying. 
But in Christ the unity of religion, life, and teaching is com- 
plete. Each element contributes a consenting voice to the 
others. The teaching is reflected in the life; teaching and life 
proceed from experience; the experience carrying within 
itself a direct and immediate assurance of its own truth, and 
being verified by its power to inspire the spirit and conduct by 
which the life is carried to a satisfyiQg and triumphant close. 
Hence there is in Christ a unique combination of conscious 
union with God, and also with man; of intensest devotion 
with the total absence of any sense of sin. The first step towards 
understanding Christianity is to ascertain the nature of this 
harmonious union of religion and theology in a completely 
consistent life. 

1. If inquiry as to the nature of this union be made, it will 
be found that the religion expresses through the theology our 
Lord^s consciousness of the Fatherhood of God, realized in and 
through a consciousness of Sonship in complete correspondence 
with that Fatherhood. The Father is made known to, and is 
made manifest by, the Son. The consciousness of perfect corre- 
spondence with the Father pervades His life. The saying, "I 
do always the things that are pleasing to Him" (John viii 29), 
sums it up. 

First and foremost is the consciousness of perfect spiritual 
and moral affinity between Himself and the Father. In that 
consciousness lies at once His own knowledge of the Father, 
and His power to reveal Him to men. What the Father is, 
what God therefore is — for the Father is simply God revealed 
in the one supreme relationship of Love and Life — is manifest 
to and in the spiritual and moral qualities of the Son. These 
are directly derived from the Father. Therefore the Father is 
what the Son manifests Him as being in the perfect life of 
Sonship. 

This relationship between the Father and the Son is unique. 
Christ is the Son as none else is, or can be. This consciousness 
of distinction is present throughout our Lord's consciousness and 
teaching. 

Yet the very peculiarity of His Sonship contributes the 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 105 

basis of a unity between Him and mankind, and lays down the 
nature of His office for mankind. "No man knoweth the Father 
but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal 
Him" (Matt, xi 27). The life of Christ, therefore, as He is 
conscious of it, is a manifestation of the Father: "I have 
glorified Thee on the earth" (John xvii 4), is His own summing- 
up of both the nature and the completeness of His life at 
the end. 

The Fatherhood manifest in the Sonship shapes His course 
throughout. Every power which He possesses is derived from it. 
Every temptation which He withstands is an incitement to depart 
from the perfectly filial spirit by way of some form of disloyalty. 
Throughout His life, this direct, personal, all-determining and 
unique experience of relationship to the Father is the key to our 
Lord^s life.^ 

What, then, was the Father revealed to the Son as being? 
In the first place, spiritual and moral perfection. ^^Your 
Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt, v 48). Secondly, 
this all-perfect Father is in direct relations with Him, and a 
continual source of inspiration to Him. "Jesus therefore an- 
swered them, and said. My teaching is not Mine, but His that 
sent Me. If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know 
of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from 
Myself. He that speaketh from himself, seeketh his own glory : 
but He that seeketh the glory of Him that sent Him, the same 
is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him" (John vii 16-18). 
This all-perfect God, who is in this immediate relationship 
to the Son, is, further. His unfailing support. "Ye shall 
leave Me alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father 
is with Me" (John xvi 32). Finally, throughout His life, and 
in all its circumstances, the Father brings to the Son perfect 
spiritual satisfaction. "Jesus saith to them. My meat is to do the 
will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work" (John 
iv 34). 

Of all this the Son is immediately certain. "I know Him: 
and if I should say, I know Him not, I shall be like unto 
you, a liar" (John viii 55). While the Son is the only 



1 See fxirther on this the author's The Fatherhood of God in Christian Truth 
and Life, pp. 13, 14. Also, The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, chap. ii. 



106 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

complete embodiment of divine revelation to men, yet the 
Father Himself influences men to recognize and receive the 
truth which is revealed in and by the Son. "I thank Thee, 
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide 
these things from the wise and understanding, and didst 
reveal them unto babes" (Matt, xi 25). "Blessed art thou 
Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven" (Matt, xvi 17). 
Spiritual and ethical perfection, manifest in the relations of 
life and love, bestowing illumination, strength, and satisfaction, 
knovm with an immediate certainty, which needs no evidence, 
save that of the blessedness it brings, this is the doctrine of 
God in His relationship to the Son, declared out of the fullness 
of His consciousness by Christ. It makes no difference that 
many of these testimonies are taken from the Fourth Gospel, 
whatever view may be taken of its authenticity. The passages 
quoted do but present in somewhat sharper outline the same 
essential features as are found in the other Gospels. If the 
least favorable view possible were taken, they would yet 
represent, if not the direct statements of Christ, the impression 
produced by them upon the minds of His early followers. 
And this for our special purpose would be hardly less 
important. 

If this is the doctrine of God, revealed in and to the 
consciousness of His Son, what is God, as Christ knows 
Him, to mankind and to the world? This question may be 
answered in words used by the present writer elsewhere. 
^^The disposition which He attributes to God is everywhere 
the fatherly in its perfection. . . . It is the cause of un- 
failing mercifulness towards sinners, as is shown in the Parable 
of the Prodigal Son ; and in the command to the disciples : ^Be 
ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful' (Luke vi 36). 
It pities and cares for the weak: ^It is not the will of 
your Father which is in heaven, that one of these should 
perish' (Matt, xviii 14). It inspires a sleepless Providence 
which watches over each and all in order to satisfy all their 
needs: ^Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, 
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your Father 
feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they?' 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 107 

(Matt, vi 26; Luke xii 24). There is therefore no need of 
anxiety concerning the necessaries of life: Tor your heavenly 
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things' (Matt, 
vi 32). This care extends to the humblest creatures, and to the 
minutest interests: ^Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? 
and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your 
Father: but the very hairs of your head are all numbered' 
(Matt. X 29, 30). 

"The love of the Father, therefore, foresees our need, and 
waits to satisfy it, without requiring to be urged: 'Your Father 
knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him' 
(Matt, vi 8). 

"And His generosity exceeds that of all earthly fathers, both 
in its bounty and in the readiness of its response: 'If ye then, 
being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how 
much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good 
things to them that ask Him?' (Matt, vii 11; Luke xi 11-13). 
And His gifts are irrespective of desert; in His fatherly 
magnanimity, 'He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on 
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust' (Matt. 
V 45). So He rejoices to reward His faithful children: 'Fear 
not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give 
you the kingdom' (Luke xii 32). And His love is the motive 
of the whole work of salvation. As to tliis, one great saying 
may stand for the whole of our Lord's teaching : 'God so loved 
the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
belie veth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life' (John 
iii 16)."i 

Such teaching involves all the attributes of God which 
technical theology delights to expound by formal definition. 
Take the simple text, "Are not two sparrows sold for 
a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground 
without your Father: but the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered" (Matt, x 29). Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnip- 
otence, the greatest natural attributes, so called, of God, are 
there; for God fulfills the obligations which He has imposed 
upon Himself as Creator by ordering the life of the humblest 
creatures which He has made. And all these attributes act in 



1 Fatherhood of God, pp. 52, 53. 



108 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the service of a love which transcends and suffuses them all. 
The whole, therefore, of formal theology as to the nature and 
attributes of God, is contained in this testimony of Christ to 
His providential care. The same is true of such a simple saying 
dealing with the religious life as this: "Thy Father which 
seeth in secret shall recompense thee" (Matt, vi 4, 6). Some- 
times such theological teaching as to the nature of God comes 
nearer to a formal definition, as when our Lord says, ^^With 
God all things are possible" (Matt, xix 26). Everywhere, how- 
ever, the attributes of the Father are made manifest to the 
Son in the life and work of love. It is by love that God 
is, above all, made known ; in the manifestation of love, through 
its life-giving work, all His spiritual and natural attributes 
are revealed. 

In the consciousness and teaching of Christ the processes 
of formal theology are reversed. These generally attain to 
love as last in the order of thought and manifestation. They 
begin by demonstrating the Being, Unity, and Personality of 
God before they advance to His spiritual and moral perfection. 
The experiences of the spiritual consciousness reverse this 
order. With our Lord the spiritual presence, which enfolds 
Him, comes first, and in that presence are involved all those 
great attributes which formal theology afterwards abstracts 
and defines. Thus in our Lord^s consciousness of God both 
His transcendence and His immanence are blended. He is 
above the world, enthroned in perfect Personality and 
sovereign will. Yet He is in closest relationship to the 
world; present throughout its whole order and ministering to 
its every want. He is so perfectly spiritual as to be the 
immediate source of every noble motive and of every holy 
affection. Yet He is so all-embracing and is able so to con- 
descend to the life of the humblest of His creatures that He 
clothes the grass, colors the lily, orders the fall of the 
sparrow, and numbers the hairs of the head. His under- 
lying reality and His determining will are the sole cause of 
permanence in the world. "Every plant which My heavenly 
Father planted not shall be rooted up" (Matt, xv 13). His 
sovereign will is the explanation of all things from their 
original creation to the spiritual condition of men's lives. 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 109 

This last is declared in the striking saying, "All that which the 
Father giveth Me shall come unto Me; and him that cometh 
unto Me I will in no wise cast out" (John vi 37). 

The whole of this doctrine of God is, as has been said, 
revealed in the life of Sonship as a religious and life-ordering 
experience. In the directness and completeness of that 
experience is shown the unique peculiarity of the Son, as 
distinguished from all other men. The metaphysical nature 
of His Sonship is revealed in and through this spiritual and 
moral experience. Apart from the spiritual splendor of 
Jesus Christ, the dogmatic propositions about His nature 
would be incredible. Just as the so-called natural attributes 
of God are made manifest in His spiritual revelation, so the 
metaphysical relationship of the Son to the Father is mani- 
fest in and through the unique spiritual and moral relation- 
ships in which He stands to Him, as shown in a life that is 
permeated by the Father's presence and power. The more 
this spiritual consciousness of Christ is considered, the stronger 
becomes the impression of its unique nature; by reason alike 
of its directness and intimacy, of its fullness and certainty 
of knowledge, and of its perfect spiritual response. Yet, al- 
though this unique relationship removes Christ, not only in 
degree but in kind, from the ranks of all other men, it is, not- 
withstanding, the complete fulfillment of the promise made in 
human nature. 

Our Lord's consciousness of being the Son of God is all- 
important for the understanding of His life and work in the 
world. Of the two conceptions by which Christ is explained 
— His divine Sonship and His Messiahship — His Sonship is 
the more important; for it was by this consciousness 
of Sonship that He interpreted the meaning of His Messianic 
office for mankind. It is usually said that our Lord spirit- 
ualized the Messianic ideal current in His time, and substi- 
tuted a spiritual and inward kingdom for the outward and 
miraculous conception of the Jews. That He did this was 
entirely due to His consciousness of Sonship and to His 
realization of what that Sonship meant as to the nature and 
purposes of God, the nature of man, and the way of salvation. 
It has been argued that our Lord came gradually and 



110 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

comparatively late to a distinct consciousness that He was the 
Christ; it is not open to question that His first and original 
consciousness of Himself was that He was the Son of God. 

2. But if our Lord's first and all-determining consciousness 
was that He was the Son of God, coupled with and growing 
out of that consciousness was the consciousness of being the 
Son of Man. That title is Messianic in its origin; it rests 
upon the vision of "one like unto a Son of Man coming in the 
clouds of heaven" contained in Dan. vii 13, 14. A^Tiile this 
vision represents a miraculous advent, yet the whole quality 
of the Messiah thus revealed is spiritual and moral. It is as 
the complete embodiment of a perfect humanity coming forth 
from God, upheld by God, and serving God, that the Son 
of Man introduces an everlasting kingdom of abiding humanity, 
before which the successive kingdoms of the wild beasts 
pass away. Thus, when the whole context of Daniel is taken 
into account, the title, "the Son of Man,'' lends itself perfectly 
to our Lord's consciousness of being the Son of God. It was 
in this direct relationship to His Father that His authority, 
the certainty and permanence of His kingdom, were grounded. 
It was in His complete consciousness of Sonship that His perfect 
embodiment of the ideal of human nature was contained, as being 
at once free, reasonable, and loyal, in contrast to all that is 
typical, not of man, but of the wild beast. 

Hence, it is not surprising that in the mind of Christ the 
spiritual and moral elements of the title, "the Son of 
Man," became supreme. It was used by Him to set forth His 
typical humanity. His breadth of human sympathy, and even, 
with a reminiscence of its ordinary prophetic use,^ His human 
frailty and apparent insignificance. Christ came "not to destroy 
but to fulfill."^ If this was true of His relationship to the 
law, it was true, above all, of His relationship to the human 
nature which underlies all law and makes law possible. To 
fulfill the law involves fulfilling the human nature, which is 
subject to, embodies, and responds to the law. This was our 
Lord's office as the Son of Man — an office which He could so 
fulfill only because of His life through, in, and to the Father as 
His Son. This consciousness that He completely realizes human 

1 See Ezekiel. 2 Matt. v. 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 111 

nature in such wise that He is united with, and not separated 
from mankind, is vital to the understanding of our Lord's 
teaching as to His life and work. 

3. Our Lord is conscious of being the Christ. It has been 
alleged, on very insufficient evidence, nay, by distorting the 
evidence that is produced, that Jesus never claimed to be the 
Christ, and that such statements of His Messiahship as are to 
be found in the Xew Testament are the invention of His 
disciples. Taking all the conditions into account, it would, on 
the other hand, appear almost inconceivable that He could 
claim to fill so unique a position towards the spiritual life of 
Israel and of the world, without having the consciousness that 
He was the Christ. Both the titles, which were frequently on 
His lips, the Son of God and the Son of Man, carried with them 
the suggestion of Messiahship. We have seen that this was the 
case with the latter. But as to the former, it will be remembered 
that Jehovah said of Solomon, "I will be to him a Father, and 
he shall be to Me a son" (1 Chron. xxi 10) ; while of Israel He 
said, "Out of Egypt have I called My son" (Hosea xi 1). The 
perfection of Divine Sonship, therefore, suggested to any one 
acquainted with the Old Testament the position of Messianic 
authority and power. 

That our Lord's express references to Messiahship are com- 
paratively scarce is true; that He even forbade men to declare 
Him to be the Christ is also true. It is further true that He 
totally transformed the conception of Messiahship, and made it 
infinitely more spiritual than the greatest of the prophets had 
foreseen that it would be. Moreover, He enriched the ideal of 
the Christ by expressly including in it the Servant-prophecies 
of Isaiah xlii and liii, with their prophetic, priestly, and 
sacrificial implications. 

When these last two facts are taken into account, they ex- 
plain our Lord's slight use of the title Christ, and His prohibi- 
tion to men to make Him known by it. He preferred to perform 
Christly offices, rather than to take to Himself the misleading 
title. He preferred to take names which, while they implied 
His Messiahship, set in the forefront its spiritual conditions 
and ends. 

Our Lord^s interpretation of the meaning of the Messianic 



112 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

office can only be understood in the light of His consciousness 
of being the Son of God and the Son of Man. In each respect, 
He, in the first place, stands apart from men, having a unique 
relationship to God and also to them. His relationship is, 
however, not only unique, but representative. It is through 
His consciousness of God and of fellowship with Him that He 
embodies and completes human nature in Himself. It is just 
this twofold fact, that He completes human nature in Himself 
by perfecting its divine relationship and that He stands in 
relationship to all men by realizing all that is contained of 
promise and need in human nature itself, that lays upon Him 
the Messianic office and defines its nature. He is the Eevealer 
of God and of man in the true relationships in which they 
stand to one another. He is the Eedeemer, ransoming from 
the evil that blights that promise and renders its fulfillment 
hopeless. He is the Life-giver, revealing Himself and redeem- 
ing mankind in bestowing the spiritual power by which the life 
of men is completed and satisfied in the likeness of His own, 
in fellowship with and allegiance to Him. His Messiahship 
stands for the office and work by which He, the Son of God and 
the Son of Man, brings men in and through Himself to share in 
His relationship to the Father and in the fullness of a re- 
deemed and perfected spiritual life. To claim the name of 
Christ, as that name carried with it distorted and materialized 
conceptions, was to defeat His object. To accept and transform 
its inmost meaning in the light of the spiritual relationships 
which He held towards God and man was the first essential of 
His ministry. Thus understood, our Lord's claim to Messiah- 
ship was indispensable. Only by means of it could He connect 
Himself and His work with the historical preparation for Him, 
while yet giving expression to spiritual truths and influences, 
which if they had ever been fully identified in the public mind 
with Messianic expectations, had long ceased to be so. The idea 
is not imposed by the faith of His disciples upon their Master, 
and then accommodated to His spiritual mission, after their 
ordinary Messianic dreams had been scattered by His cross. On 
the contrary, just the conception of the Gospels is contained in 
our Lord's fundamental consciousness that He is the Son of God 
and the Son of Man. 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 113 

From all this it follows that the personal relationship in 
which men as individuals are to stand to Christ is everywhere 
emphasized. Discipleship, not merely as the means of acquaint- 
ance with His truth, but as the condition of entering into inward 
and outward fellowship with His life, is the way by which His 
kingdom is set up in the hearts of men. 

This fellowship by the way of discipleship is not only 
the satisfaction of human need, but brings salvation from sin. 
Everywhere behind and within human need Christ sees the 
presence of sin as its cause. This fact is so familiar, and the 
evidence of it is so manifest throughout the Gospels, that it 
is needless to enlarge upon or to establish it. For the present 
purpose it may be taken for granted. A study of the Gospels 
will show that Christ's ministry as Eedeemer from sin has 
three aspects, which were naturally developed at a later stage 
into the doctrine of His three offices — the Prophetic, the 
Priestly, and the Kingly. First in order comes His work as 
the Eevealer of the Father in grace and truth; the imparting 
of a knowledge, which He alone possesses, to men whose 
spiritual nature is in such need of it as to be unfulfilled 
without it, but who can apprehend it only in Him, as His 
words become to them '^spirit and life.'' Secondly, there 
is His Priestly office, not so clearly outlined in the Gospels as 
the Prophetic, yet to be found there, and emphasized in the 
closing scenes of His life, especially according to the Gospel 
of St. John. Thirdly, there is the Kingly aspect of His 
work, resting upon spiritual foundations, and spiritual in its 
nature. Its essential feature is that all the teaching of Christ 
becomes an authoritative command over the life, unfolding a law 
of life and love to be received by faith, and to be embodied in 
action. ^^Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; 
for so I am."^ Master and Lord, not by virtue of a merely 
external authority, but by virtue of dominion over the hearts 
and lives of men, who are constituted for faith in the Son of 
God. 

These three offices, or aspects of Christ's work, are bound 
together in the closest unity. Each is coextensive with the 
whole of His teaching, doing, and suffering. Every element 

^ John xiii. 13. 



114 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of His life belongs to a complete unity, v/hich is, according 
to the point of view from which it is regarded, entirely 
prophetic, entirely priestly, and entirely kingly. Into that 
unity the death of Christ is brought, not as an unforeseen, 
a meaningless, incident, but as a vital part, even the vital 
part, of His Messianic work. He gives "His life a ransom 
for many."^ Upon the cross His identification with man 
becomes complete; His taking over the burden of their sin 
and sorrow is perfected in a great act of vicarious suffering; 
His obedience to the Father attains its consummation. By a 
final act of revelation, of self-surrender, and of love for men, 
He enters into the fullness of His Christly office through the 
sacrifice of Himself. 

Still the personal relationship is supreme. Perfecting His 
work of revelation and redemption by His death on the cross, our 
Lord becomes in His risen life, the life of His disciples. The 
ultimate end of His work is His glorification. His glorification 
is that of the "grain of wheat," which by falling into the ground 
and dying, "bringeth forth much fruit."^ This fruit-bearing is 
brought about by means of the outpouring of His Spirit, to 
which He looks forward as completing that personal influence 
which brings about the salvation of men. 

Thus the Christly office of our Lord, manifested in its 
prophetic, priestly, and kingly aspects, is redemptive; brings 
men out of ignorance, sin, and incompleteness, to the Father 
in Him, and to that fullness of life which can only be the 
outcome of this completed relationship. The whole of this 
work of salvation is wrought out by means of a combination 
of all-embracing sympathy with men, and of dynamic influence 
over them, which reveal His spiritual relationship to them 
all; for without such a relationship neither the sympathy nor 
the influence can be explained. This original relationship 
is consummated in the personal fellowship of the Spirit and 
faith. 

Naturally our Lord, in this revelation of His work as the 
Christ, adopts, and in adopting transforms, the Apocalyptic 
teaching of the Old Testament. The prophets had foretold 
the coming of the "Day of Jehovah," when there should be a 

» Matt. XX. 28; Mark x. 45. 2 John xii. 24. 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 115 

final consummation of those spiritual processes of judgment 
and salvation which they beheld going on around them 
continuously. In the intuitions and needs of the human 
heart the eternal realization and the temporal process are ever 
connected; the arrival at the historic goal with the spiritual 
development. To look for the divine accomplishment without 
the spiritual process is to expect an irrational miracle. To 
dwell upon an unending process without the satisfaction of 
an eternal realization is equally unsatisfjing to the spiritual 
reason. In the teaching of our Lord both are held together 
in a perfect whole. The working-out of salvation is spiritual, 
gradual, secured by supernatural means through an orderly 
and inward development. But at the end is the goal of a 
final and complete consurmnation, when these spiritual issues 
shall have been wrought out in a world-embracing redemption. 
The emphasis in the Gospels is now upon the one and now 
upon the other of these two aspects of the perfect whole. 
The essential feature is the subordination of the history of 
the universe to the spiritual life which consummates and 
explains it. In this aspect our Lord's teaching is the pro- 
phetic announcement of that which satisfies the spiritual intui- 
tions of man and the spiritual instincts, which manifest them- 
selves most fully in the highest spiritual and moral — ^but to some 
extent in all natural — endeavor. Such is the general outline of 
the work of Christ presented in the Gospels.^ 

4. Our Lord's filial consciousness, and the conception of 
His work as Christ, which was consequent on it, involved 
His transformation of the accepted doctrine of the kingdom of 
God. 

The conception of the kingdom of God was accepted by 
Christ, and formed the basis of His teaching. No phrase is 
80 frequently on His lips as that of "the kingdom of God," 
or "the kingdom of heaven." The form is Jewish; repre- 
senting the theocratic conception which was embodied in their 
state, and formed the substance of their expectation of the 
future. But while in form the conception lent itself to those 
external and mechanical views which, with their childish 
imagery and their national ideals, characterized Messianic 

1 The miraculoxis element is considered later on. See p. 132, et seq. 



116 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

hopes in our Lord^s days, yet in substance, the doctrine of the 
kingdom of God was an attempt to give expression to the under- 
lying consciousness — essential to all true religion — of the 
absoluteness of God, of His complete control over all human 
life and over the world. It represented also, though in inade- 
quate form, the faith, also essential to the highest spiritual life, 
that God, who is absolute in His sovereignty, exercises His 
sovereignty to secure adequate spiritual and moral ends, bring- 
ing with them satisfaction to human hearts and heirship of 
the world to men of faith. That the conception had become 
impoverished was due to the lack of adequate depth, breadth, 
and content in the spiritual and ethical ideals of those who held 
it. It needed the uplifting and enlargement of those ideals in 
order to make it satisfactory. 

Our Lord adopted this conception, and made it the basis of 
His teaching, not only because it was the connecting-link with 
the past, but because it did thus express certain elements which 
are vital to a living spiritual faith. A kingdom entering into 
human life from above, representing the absolute sway of God 
exercised for supreme spiritual ends, and adjusting the universe 
to those ends as they are wrought out — this was the starting- 
point of our Lord's teaching. 

Three great changes in the conception, however, were brought 
about by the filial consciousness of our Lord. In the first place, 
the absolute God, whose will controls all things and brings about 
their consummation, is the Father. Hence a new graciousness, 
spiritual depth and breadth, and even geniality, are brought to 
the ideal of His kingdom. The sovereignty of God is His 
sovereignty for the accomplishment of fatherly ends by fatherly 
means. His Kingship is the authority and executive power of 
His love and grace. 

Secondly, entrance into the kingdom of God is conditioned, not 
by external peculiarities or advantages, but by the reception of 
the filial spirit, which responds to the Father's love, and which 
creates and maintains righteousness, purity, and love upon 
earth. 

Hence, thirdly, the conception of the kingdom as affecting 
the community and embracing the material universe shares 
in this spiritual transformation. It no longer represents the 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 117 

external supremacy of bare will, as though God were a 
Supreme Other and Outsider, imposing His kingdom by an 
omnipotent decree upon the refractory material of the earth. 
In perfect balance, the kingdom of God is represented as 
both transcendent and immanent, as a gift from above and 
a growth from within, as a divine event, and as a natural 
process depending on spiritual forces. Hence the breadth of 
God's providence, which includes the sparrow and the lily. 
Hence the inwardness of the kingdom, which is not Here 
or There, but is within man. Hence its expansive growth as 
the mustard-seed and the leaven; although in its manifesta- 
tion it encounters opposition and falls like seed upon all 
kinds of ground to take its chance. In this process it works 
judgment on those who will not receive it. Within its com- 
prehensiveness these great spiritual and moral issues are 
clearly recognized. Personality is so emphasized in God and 
freedom in man, that the doctrine of immanence is guarded 
at all points against Pantheism. God's presence in man is 
not due to the fact that man is a part of nature. On the 
contrary, the presence of God throughout nature is due to 
the fact that nature is a providence and an instrument of the 
spiritual life, which becomes manifest in the dealings of God 
with men. 

5. It will be objected that there is accommodation in all this; 
that our Lord's teaching is not absolute truth, because at every 
point the influence of particular and transitory conceptions rooted 
in Jewish life can be traced. 

In a sense, the truth of this must be admitted. Absolute 
truth can only enter the world by a temporal process; by a 
gradual unfolding which causes the present to connect itself, 
at each moment, with the past, and to adjust itself to that 
spiritual consciousness which has been developed through all 
the stages of the past. The principle of evolution forbids 
absolute new beginnings in the midst of an unfolding order; 
lays down the condition recognized by our Lord Himself, that 
His coming was "not to destroy, but to fulfill." ^ A revelation 
out of connection with the historic past, keeping no terms 
with the spiritual and moral presuppositions of the present, 

» Matt. V. 17. 



118 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

is to men nowadays unthinkable. A Christ entering the 
world as a winged passenger from without, unaffected by all 
those conditions which educate the spiritual and mental 
faculties of every child born into the world, whatever else 
He might be, would be in no rational sense the Son of God 
incarnate. For incarnation involves not merely the visibility 
of the iiesh, but the entrance into all those conditions of 
human life of which the flesh is the natural sign. Our Lord's 
own doctrine of the immanence of the kingdom of God as 
against its merely miraculous transcendence, involves this, 
that He stands in such vital relations to the history of the 
past that in His fulfillment He absorbs and reproduces it. 
Therefore, in order that Christ might connect His religion with 
the past, and might make it intelligible to the men to whom 
He came and through whom He would work, it must needs be 
that the truth, as revealed in Him, should bear the marks of 
His time. There must be a protective sheath of historically 
explained conceptions round the full bloom of His fulfillment. 
The all-important matter, however, is that within the local form 
thus historically explained there is a spiritual fulfillment that 
gives complete expression to ideal relations and supplies a 
full revelation of truth, which in its essential principles can 
never be enlarged, but only more and more completely realized 
in human character and relationships. As to this, it remains 
true that every growth in spiritual consciousness, every at- 
tempt to explain more adequately the divine relationships and 
the spiritual experiences of the human heart, is carried 
out by means of a return to Christ, in whom they are 
ideally expressed, and not of an advance beyond Him. And, 
further, those who come by this way to apprehend the 
sovereignty of Christ over the spiritual consciousness of mankind, 
will be led from that apprehension to a larger conception of 
providential design in preparing for Him just that body of 
presuppositions, conceptions, and expectations which He, by 
adopting them, transfigured. 

6. But what of the authenticity of all this? It is im- 
possible within our limits to deal with the details of the 
gospel history, or with the establishment of this or that 
incident, miraculous or otherwise, of our Lord's life. All 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 119 

these must be brought to the test of historical criticism, like 
every other professed fact of human history. But whatever 
may be the result of applying such standards to this or that 
detail, it remains abundantly clear to all rational observers that 
a vast spiritual change took place with the advent of Chris- 
tianity, that that change took the form of an ascertainable ap- 
prehension of the relations of God to men, and that it was due 
to the unique consciousness and the unspeakable influence of 
Jesus Christ Himself. For our immediate purpose this is 
sufficient. Xo other fact of history is so certain. It can only 
be denied by a prejudice against which no other record could 
stand. 

Doubtless there were foregleams of the Christian teaching 
about God. There is no need to claim what is called absolute 
originality for the teachings of our Lord. Only a narrow 
idea of revelation can make that seem of first-rate importance 
either to upholders or to antagonists of the Christian faith. 
Doubtless, also, the quickened and deepened spiritual ex- 
perience of the successors of Christ had vast influence upon 
the religious thinking and aspirations of men. Yet they 
themselves attributed, alike their experience, their thought, 
and their influence, to their knowledge of Christ. Their 
theolog}^ is only a throwing into intellectual form of the 
experience through which they had derived from Christ a 
consciousness of God, akin to that which gave to Him the 
name of the Son of God. Such an uplifting of 
spiritual consciousness could only proceed from a supreme 
spiritual Personality. The testimony of human experience shows 
conclusively that it were far easier for a literary committee to 
have created Shakespeare than for a company of apostles 
and evangelists to have created the figure and teaching of 
Christ, except as an attempt to describe and to explain a 
transcendent Personality who had lived before their eyes 
and had reproduced Himself in their lives. This is the 
ultimate fact of Christianity. And it cannot be resolved 
away. 

7. One additional subject remains to be considered before 
passing away from the teaching of our Lord as reported in 
the Gospels. It is the doctrine contained in the Gospel of 



120 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

St. John as to the means by which the revelation of Christ is 
received by men. 

The grace and truth which He manifested in His life as the 
Son of God and the Eedeemer of mankind do not carry universal 
conviction to the hearts of men. The Gospel of St. John is 
itself the story of the growth, side by side with one another, 
of an ever stronger faith in Christ on the part of His disciples, 
and of an ever intenser opposition to Him on the part of the 
general body of the Jews. Thus it is clearly recognized from 
the beginning that, however complete may be the truth of our 
Lord's life and teaching, it does not avail to secure the universal 
consent of men. 

The Gospel of St. John deals with the problem, and presents 
to us an account of the means by which belief in Christ is 
reached, which may be said to afford the material for a complete 
philosophy of the Christian faith. 

The truth of Christ comes to man as an illumination. 
The frequency with which the term, "The Light," is applied to 
our Lord in this Gospel brings this into prominence. Similar 
teaching is conveyed by St. Paul, when he says, "Seeing it is 
God that said. Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in 
our hearts to give the illumination of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."^ This illumination 
proceeds from Christ as the Life: "the life was the light of 
men."2 The term, "the life" carries with it two elements : first, 
that our Lord completely realizes in Himself and reveals the 
true life of men; secondly, that His embodiment of this true 
life is life-giving; that He conveys to others the life which He 
Himself thus possesses. Behind both these elements, and ex- 
plaining them, is His eternal relationship to the world as the 
Word of the Father. 

But the light needs a special faculty of vision, in order 
that it may be apprehended; and that faculty of vision is 
itself the consequence of receiving the spiritual life of 
which Christ is the source. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of 
God."3 "That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which 
is born of the Spirit is spirit."* Add to these sayings 

1 2 Cor. iv. 6. 2 John i. 4. » John iii. 3. * John iii. 6. 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 131 

the declaration, "The words that I have spoken unto 3^ou are 
spirit, and are life/'^ and the whole doctrine of the Gospel 
becomes clear. The truth of Christ is apprehended by a 
spiritual faculty. That spiritual faculty is the outcome of 
spiritual life. Spiritual life consists in entering through 
Christ into completed relationships with the Father. These 
spiritual relationships are realized only by a 'l^irth from above/' 
which emancipates and completes the inner spiritual nature, 
causing it to transcend the merely natural, and setting it free 
from sin. The means by which this birth from above is brought 
about is the quickening influence of the spiritual and living 
words of Christ. 

This doctrine gives an account of actual spiritual expe- 
rience. It has analogies outside the apparent frontiers of 
Christianity. Cases of conversion are by no means unknown 
beyond its limits; while such experiences are shadowed forth 
by the sudden birth and development of many other faculties 
in the life of men. The spiritual, in its influence upon human 
life, is, it must be recognized, far wider than the specifically 
Christian. The conversion of a Buddha is equally real with 
the conversion of a Paul. The difference lies not in the fact, 
which is true in both cases, that a higher nature supersedes, 
or rather fulfills, a lower, but in the different degrees of com- 
pleteness in which the full truth of life is presented in the one 
case and in the other. The phenomenon of which our Lord 
speaks, when He lays down the necessity of a birth from 
above, is not imaginary, but indisputably real. It is the 
highest example of facts with which all are familiar, namely, 
the birth of new and higher affections and sympathies, or the 
manifestation at special epochs in the life of men of new 
faculties, which, only faintly present before, transcend, or even 
replace, the old interests of life, so that life itself is remodeled 
into a new whole. The experience under the influence of 
Christ is of a frequency, of a degree and quality not found 
elsewhere; but it represents with the utmost intensity and 
completeness spiritual changes, the possibility of which is 
inherent in the constitution of human nature itself. The 
question becomes, therefore, not of the reality of such changes, 

1 John vi. 63. 



122 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

but of their explanation and of their relation to truth : how far 
that which is revealed within them is thereby authenticated as 
being reality and not fanc}-. 

In the next place, our Lord lays stress, according to 
St. John, on the fact that faith in Himself is ethically con- 
ditioned. "If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of 
the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from 
myself."^ This saying, though it does not stand in immediate 
connection with the doctrine of the birth from above, yet 
throws light upon it. Indeed, the will to do God's will must 
have preceded such a completed experience as enables men 
"to see the kingdom of God." The willing to do the will of 
God may be taken as the first stage of the process which is 
completed in regeneration. The latter doctrine must not be 
interpreted in too abstract a fashion. Before a birth takes 
place there must be a life ready to be born. The preparation 
is complete for its entrance into a larger sphere. The very 
figure shows, therefore, that regeneration is not to be treated 
as a pure miracle; as if it were the instantaneous creation of 
something which did not exist in promise before. The birth from 
above is the completed realization of a previous potentiality, the 
attainment by a spiritual process of its appointed end, the coming 
into full manifestation and freedom of powers which were present 
but restrained before. 

The faculty which apprehends the truth of our Lord's teaching 
is not preeminently an intellectual faculty. It is spiritually and 
morally determined : involves a state of the conscience, the will, 
and the affections, as well as the intellect. Further, it is an act, 
not only of assent, but of adhesion; a movement to a spiritual 
attitude, which not only commends itself to the intellect as being 
true, but to the conscience as being right, and to the affections as 
being satisfying. 

The element of satisfaction is the last upon which stress is 
laid in the Gospel of St. John. Everywhere it meets us as 
being bound up with faith in Christ, and a convincing veri- 
fication of it. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is 
that saith to thee. Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have 
asked of Him and He would have given thee living water."^ 

» John vii. 17. 2 John iv. 10. 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 123 

This is from the side of him who offers satisfaction. From 
the side of those who receive it comes the response, "Lord, to 
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And 
we have believed and know that Thou art the holy one of God."^ 
Many other passages might be quoted to the same effect. This 
emphasis on spiritual satisfaction is prominent also in the 
s}Tioptic gospels ; as for example, in the great invitation, "Come 
unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest.^'2 

If it is the life which supplies the light by creating 
the faculty that perceives it, so, in its turn, the light is 
verified as being light by the unfolding, perfecting, and 
satisfaction of all the powers of life and activity which 
are evoked by it. This is the only verification of the 
sayings of Christ offered in the Grospel of St. John. "The 
words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and life."^ 
He who receives the illumination of Christ by receiving 
it lives and "sets to his seal" that that by which he lives 
is true. 

Such is the doctrine of spiritual discernment, of the condi- 
tions which govern it,"and of the satisfaction which verifies 
it, that is contained in St. John's Gospel. How does such 
discernment stand related to reason ? How does it stand related 
to the means by which men attain to conviction of truth in 
other matters? What light does it throw upon the moral re- 
sponsibility of all men for coming to apprehend Christian 
truth? We are obliged to consider these questions before our 
understanding of the doctrine is complete. There are those 
who answer them by affirming that the doctrine before us with- 
draws Christian truth from the sphere of reason altogether, 
that it sets up a doctrine of evidence unlike anything that pre- 
vails in regard to other subjects of discussion, and that, if it be 
true, it removes all blameworthiness from those who are not led 
to faith in Christ, since they have not the faculty by which He 
is apprehended. 

Each of these assertions rests upon a misunderstanding of 
the doctrine. In the first place, any complete conception of 
what is involved in and needful to reason must include in it 



1 John vi. 68. 2 Matt. xi. 28. ' John vi. 63. 



124 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

much larger and deeper elements than those which are required 
in order to assent to a mathematical proposition. Perfected 
reason would mean the complete apprehension of the relations 
in which man stands to the realities which condition his being. 
The final statement of the propositions which convey his 
doctrine on this matter may perhaps be determined by purely 
intellectual activity. But the sources from which the material 
for his final statement is supplied must include every element 
of his being, every form of his relationship to the universe of 
which he is part. The sources of the completed reason, there- 
fore, include, in addition to the strictly intellectual, at least, 
the moral and affectional elements of his being. In and 
through all these his nature is manifested, his relations to the 
universe are realized. By all these the world affects him, and 
he, in turn, affects the world. Only, therefore, through them 
all can he learn what the world is, what he himself is, and 
what the relations of these two sides of reality are. Hence, 
according to the completeness of his being in all its faculties 
and affections, is the fullness of a man's material for drawing 
satisfactory conclusions as to the full nature of reality. To 
be short of a sense or a faculty is to lose an aspect of reality, 
and thus to have incomplete means of representing to and by 
reason the nature of the whole. This which is true of sense- 
perception is true also throughout the whole range of human 
knowledge. When, then, completed spiritual life and true 
ethical intention are treated by our Lord as being indispen- 
sable to the full knowledge of the truth, His doctrine is that of 
the reason itself, provided always that what He requires can 
lay claim to be real. Whether this be so or not can only become 
clear when our inquiry as to what is meant by Christianity is 
complete. 

Thus there is no distinction in principle between our Lord's 
doctrine of the apprehension of spiritual truth and that which 
holds of any other kind of truth. Even so far as assent is 
determined by the more narrowly intellectual faculties there 
is close resemblance between the two. To the non-mathematical 
mind, for example, the formulas of the higher mathematics are 
at least as meaningless, as to the non-religious mind are the 
declarations of Christ. If it be answered that this is because 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 125 

of a defective faculty, which so far as it goes travels towards 
assent to the propositions of mathematical science, perhaps in 
the end it may be found that the same thing is true in the case 
of weakness of spiritual faculty. And the resemblance is yet 
closer in the case of the creations of art, music, and the higher 
poetry. 

Again, the power to apprehend truth constantly changes, ac- 
cording to the influence exerted upon the mind by its own 
predominant interests. The faculty of perception and apprecia- 
tion grows in certain directions, is atrophied in others. The 
case of Darwin is constantly cited as a striking illustration of 
this. This law extends beyond the individual life, and accounts 
for contrasted types of human temperament, and, therefore, of 
religious belief. 

Finally as to the measure of moral culpability for the rejec- 
tion of the word of Christ. The general doctrine of St. John's 
Gospel is undoubtedly that each man is responsible for that 
ethical condition, which enables him to see, and predisposes 
him to believe truth, wherever and so far as it is presented 
to him. 

Each man is held accountable for his prejudices, for his un- 
willingness to accept the truth, which requires from him a higher 
standard of spiritual and moral life than he desires ; in short, for 
all causes which predispose him to unbelief, regardless of the 
evidence presented to him. 

Moreover, it may even be said that, according to the 
teaching of the Fourth Gospel, right spiritual and moral 
conditions not only prevent prejudiced opposition to the 
evidence presented, but actually predispose to the belief of 
that evidence. Christ is the true representative of completed 
truth, in whom everything that is of the nature of truth 
is included; to whom therefore every indication of truth in all 
departments of human life ultimately leads. He who through 
love of truth comes upon any truth is on one of many roads, 
which when they reach their destination converge in Christ 
as their goal. Especially Christ is "the Truth,'' who alone 
brings satisfaction, harmony, and freedom to the spiritual 
nature of man in all his relationships with the universe. 
From this point of view, therefore, man is responsible for 



126 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

having a state of heart which actually needs and rejoices to find 
Christ when He is presented. 

This broad fact of moral responsibility must undoubtedly be 
qualified by various considerations; especially by that of early 
training and associations. 

But it is the assumption upon which all human life 
proceeds; without which indeed human life is impossible. 
The only ground for supposing that its basis is destroyed by 
the Gospel of St. John, is the overstrained understanding of 
the doctrine of rebirth, to which attention has already been 
directed. 

Speaking broadly, the regenerated life, according to St. 
John's Gospel, is life completed in all its relationships, 
particularly in the divine. The divine and supernatural, 
however, does not supersede, but enspheres and pervades the 
merely natural. On the other hand, the merely natural is 
the home of sin, with its alienation from God, its selfish and 
unholy principles of life. The way of completion, therefore, 
is the way of redemption. In coming to the Father through 
the spirit of sonship by Him who is "the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life," human nature is at once fulfilled and delivered from 
the bondage of sin. The completed life of regeneration is there- 
fore in the highest sense normal, and in the broadest sense of the 
term natural. 

II. It is necessary, in the next place, to regard our Lord as 
the source of the Christian religion, so far as He is presented to 
us a8 being this, not by means of His own consciousness and 
teaching, but by means of the consciousness of those who receive 
the religion from Him. If the Gospels represent our Lord's 
Christship from the standpoint of His own consciousness, the 
remainder of the New Testament, especially the writings of 
St. Paul and of St. John, set forth His Christship, as it is 
realized by the faith of believers, who receive through Him, 
by reason of it, the gifts of salvation. Coming on, then, to these 
two great t3rpes of apostolic teaching — and they may stand for 
the remainder of the New Testament — five great features stand 
out at once. 

First of all, the whole basis of their teaching is experi- 
mental. They are neither philosophers nor dogmatists; 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 127 

neither dialecticians nor controversialists. The basis of 
what they teach is, according to their claims, a direct spiritual 
experience. This is represented in the most intuitive form 
by St. John. "The things which we have seen and heard 
declare we unto you, that ye may have fellowship with us'' 
(1 John i 3). "Hereby know we that we know Him, if we 
keep His commandments" (1 John ii 3). "Whosoever sinneth 
hath not seen Him, neither knoweth Him" (1 John iii 6). 
The assumption throughout is that the doctrine of God set 
forth rests upon a personal acquaintance with Him similar to 
that which we enjoy with our fellow men, save that it is 
more intimate and influential. The same is true of St. Paul, 
though the starting-point of his personal experience is not, 
as in the case of St. John, the Incarnation of our Lord, but 
His supernatural manifestation on the road to Damascus. 
That external vision, to which reference is made more than 
once in the epistles of St. Paul, is connected with an inner 
and direct revelation. This is made clear, for example, in 
such passages as — "We all, "with open face reflecting as a glass 
the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from 
glory to glor/' (2 Cor. iii 18). Or in the similar passage, 
closely following upon it, "It is God that said, Light shall shine 
out of darkness, who shined in our hearts to give the illumination 
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" 
(2Cor. iv6). 

In the second place, that which is experienced is the 
entrance into a spiritual life, which is dominated and inspired 
throughout by the relationship of sonship to God. Every- 
where in the writings, both of St. John and of St. Paul, the 
controlling relationship in which believers come to stand to 
God is, as was the case with Christ Himself, the relationship of 
sonship. 

Thirdly, it is equally characteristic, both of St. John and 
of St. Paul, that they regard this experience of sonship as 
being received directly by means of a spiritual relationship 
to Christ Himself. It is not something which they receive 
independently of Him, and of which He merely informs them. 
"To them that received Him," says St. John in the Prologue 
to the Gospel, "to them gave He authority to become sons of 



128 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

God, even unto them that believe on His name." In the same 
way the whole of St. Paul's experience is brought about by 
Christ, and is conditioned by that spiritual state which he 
describes as being 'Hn Christ/^ To imagine that experience 
of sonship as separated from the consciousness of continuous 
fellowship with Christ as the means of its reception, 
is to depart entirely from the teaching of the New 
Testament. 

Fourthly, the experience of sonship thus brought about is 
attended by immense spiritual and moral consequences. The 
new relationship to God gives an inward consciousness of 
entirely new relations to the whole realm of life, both present 
and prospective. "It is not yet made manifest,'' says St. John, 
"what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested 
we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is. 
And every one that hath this hope set on Him, purifieth 
himself, even as He is pure" (1 John iii 2, 3). Kindred 
teaching is found in St. Paul; first of all in his doctrine of 
heirship and in the next place in the whole of his doctrine 
of life in the Spirit. The Spirit who is the Spirit of Adoption, 
the Spirit of Christ, becomes the inspiring Spirit of the whole 
of life, quickening and shaping it, developing continually 
fruits of the Spirit, which are manifest in holy conduct and 
dispositions throughout the entire range of human relation- 
ships. 

Lastly, the whole of this is brought about by means of 
redemption from sin. Christianity is sometimes spoken of 
as the religion of redemption. There is truth in this state- 
ment, though it is sometimes expressed in a one-sided way. 
It would be equally possible to speak of Christianity as the 
religion of revelation, or as the religion of consummation. 
The very intuitive character of St. John's Gospel, for 
example, shows how essential is the apprehension of the revela- 
tion in Christ. Moreover, so far as Christianity is the religion 
of redemption, that redemption is wrought out in large measure 
by processes which are those of revelation and of consumma- 
tion. The true knowledge of God is of vital importance in 
the work of redemption, and the freeing men from sin is 
accomplished by an inner quickening and transformation. 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 129 

which enable them to complete that trae idea of their being 
which has remained unfulfilled, or has become distorted under 
the influence of sin. But while our conception of the relation- 
ship of Christ to the spiritual life of His people must be large 
enough to embrace all these conceptions, thus closely inter- 
related, it remains true that the typical Christian experience, as 
represented to us in the New Testament, is an experience of 
redemption through Christ. 

The experience of sonship as brought about by Christ, and 
involving a spiritual transition, is the key to the whole doctrine 
of salvation contained in the New Testament. The transition 
involves change at every point of outward relationship, and 
of inward spiritual disposition. First of all, there is the 
change of relations with God. Hence out of this direct expe- 
rience through Christ comes the doctrine of Eeconciliation, 
which has so large a place in the theology of St. Paul. The 
new experience as involving a transformed relationship to 
God is accounted for and described by means of this great 
conception of Eeconciliation. The change of status which 
results from reconciliation is described by the term Adoption 
in relation to sonship, by that of Justification in relation to 
forgiveness. 

Again, the birth of the new affections, which enable men to 
fulfill the relationships into which they are brought by adoption 
and Justification, is due, according to St. Paul, to the death of 
an old nature and the resurrection of a new. Or, according to 
St. John, it is brought about by a birth from above, which, in 
completing the spiritual nature, redeems it, alike from the limita- 
tions and the sinfulness of that which is merely born of the flesh, 
and is flesh. 

But the entrance of this quickening Spirit is attended 
by divine power, rescuing from the thraldom of evil and 
bringing into the possession and enjoyment of good. 
Therefore the conception of redemption in the more special 
acceptance of the term, as deliverance from the tyranny of 
evil, is the fit and necessary description of that feature of 
the transition. 

Finally, through all these changes there are brought about 
an unworldliness, an inward harmony, an unquestioned 



130 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

supremacy of the higher over the lower, and a directing of 
all powers to the ends of the kingdom of Christ, which is 
conveyed by the doctrine of Sanctification, or of the Spirit on its 
practical side. Thus it is the experience of sonship, as brought 
about by an all-pervading transition, which contains within itself 
all the elements described by means of the Christian doctrines of 
the Spiritual Life. 

Again, the transition which needs for its explanation and 
description the doctrines of reconciliation, adoption, justifica- 
tion, regeneration, the life of the Spirit is, as we have already 
seen, brought about in and through Christ. He is experienced 
as the source and the means of the whole change in every 
aspect of it. Thus the description has to be completed by 
the doctrine of the work of Christ, in regard to all these 
aspects of salvation. The reconciliation with God is brought 
about through Christ, and especially through His death; 
hence the doctrine of the Atonement. Adoption, justification, 
regeneration, redemption, are all received in and through 
Him; hence the doctrine of life in Christ, and through Christ. 
Finally, the gift of the Spirit; and the life of the Spirit is an 
experience immediately and always depending upon a certain 
prior relationship to Christ Himself. Thus out of the 
experience of sonship, as that of a changed relationship to God 
brought about by Christ Himself, there grow naturally and 
necessarily all the descriptive doctrines by which the work 
of Christ in its relation to the salvation of men is set forth in 
the New Testament. They are all conditioned from begin- 
ning to end by this conscious experience of a divine relation- 
ship, as involving spiritual change, and as brought home and 
sustained by relationship to Christ Himself. The critical 
change brought about by Christ is that He converts and 
completes human nature by bringing men into that con- 
sciousness of sonship which He enjoys Himself, and into 
the fullness of that filial spirit which is the contrary of sin, 
with its rebelliousness and secularity. This fundamental 
experience is the key to the whole of the apostolic theology. 
All else rests upon it, explains or describes it. The reality of 
the experience so described is the chief verification of all the 
doctrines as to what is involved in it. The establishment of 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 131 

that reality is again shown, therefore, to be the^ chief task of 
Christian Evidences. 

In the next place, the transformed experience of the 
Christian life is bound up with certain facts of the life of 
Christ. What Christ is and does for His disciples. He is and 
does by means of the facts of His historical life, above all by 
His atoning death, ^ His resurrection, and His ascension into 
heaven. We are thus brought face to face with the miraculous 
element in the gospel, and particularly with the greatest of 
all miracles — our Lord's resurrection from the dead. It is 
conceded on all hands, that apart from the belief in the 
Eesurrection, Christianity would have been impossible. It 
is conceded further by all Christian Theists, even by those 
who are perplexed by, or even deny, the physical miracle, 
that the Resurrection represents an objective fact in the life 
of our Lord, and is not a mere subjective hallucination on the 
part of His followers. Further, the fact of the Eesurrection, 
as believed in by the Early Church, has colored and shaped 
the whole of Christian theology. It is not too much to say 
that the whole Christian view of the nature and destination 
of the universe, as presented to us in the New Testament, 
rests upon our Lord's resurrection from the dead. A Chris- 
tianity which ceased to believe in that greatest of miracles 
would be a Christianity forced so entirely to remodel the 
whole round of Christian doctrine as presented in the apostolic 
writings, that it would become practically a new religion. 
It may be asked whether the Christian view of the world 
would be greatly affected, if it were held that the presentation 
of the risen Christ to the vision of His disciples was a 
real manifestation of His continued life, and due to a direct act 
of the Father, but not involving the actual resurrection of His 
body. The answer is that it would. For the physical reality 
of the resurrection of our Lord is important as a demonstra- 
tion of critical importance, that the whole nature of the 
world is in the last resort spiritual, that the spiritual in it is 



1 The meaning of the Death of Christ, as apprehended by the Christian 
Conscio\isness, is dealt with in Book III. chap. v. See also the author's work. 
The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement. And also chap. viii. of his book on 
The Fatherhood of God in Relation to Christian Truth and Life. 



132 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

not in subjection to the so-called material, but is dominant, 
and that according to the dignity, worth, and meaning of the 
spiritual personality is the measure of its dominance over the 
material. 

The Eesurrection is, further, the highest manifestation of 
the personality and will of God. It is that which stands 
between the modern world and a view of God which, while 
it may be in intention ideal and spiritual, does, in fact, tend 
to lose sight of and hold upon His personality, and to consider 
Him as the impersonal ground and spiritual end of all creation 
rather than as its sovereign Lord. The particular evidence 
of the Resurrection is not here in question; but only the 
place which it occupies in the Christian religion. The conten- 
tion that it literally took place does not imply that there 
is not abundant reason for further reflection upon the relation 
in which the resurrection of Christ, believed in as an outward 
and historical event, stands to the ordinary constitution of 
the universe. It is the miracle of miracles, and there- 
fore raises the whole question of what is meant by a miracle, 
and of how it stands related to the ordinary course of the world^s 
events. 

In the case of the resurrection of our Lord the miracle 
must be seen, if it is to be treated as the New Testament 
treats it, first of all in its vital relation to the whole of His 
work; secondly, in its relation to His unique personality; and 
thirdly, in its relation to the whole miraculous element which 
is found throughout His life. It is absolutely impossible 
to separate the so-called miraculous from the non-miraculous 
throughout the whole narrative of our Lord's history. 
His life and teaching are interwoven with the mighty deeds in 
which He exercised His compassion in the healing of men. 
Even those who are little disposed to take the orthodox view 
upon these matters find it less and less easy to explain away 
altogether that element in our Lord's life; more and more 
necessary to recognize that there are untold secrets as to 
the power of the spiritual over the natural, of the personal over 
the impersonal, of mind over physical conditions, whether in 
the subject himself or in others whom he influences. The 
limits of such power cannot at present be determined. It is 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 133 

from this point of view that we must approach the gospel 
narratives and the miracles in the life of our Lord. At every 
point the miraculous stands in the closest relation to His 
personality. In the more humanitarian descriptions of Jesus, 
justice is seldom done to that aspect of His character and 
influence which shows that, above all. He exercised divine 
authority. He is resolved away into a beautiful spiritual 
and poetic dreamer; He is set forth as an ardent and some- 
what impatient reformer of abuses, or as a supreme martyr to 
the loftiness of His ideals, and, perhaps, to the impracticability 
of His methods. But in all such representations of Him, one 
salient feature which stands out in the gospel narrative is 
overlooked, namely, that men in contact with Him were, 
above all, conscious of the unique authority which He 
exercised over their spirits. The intensity of opposition which 
He aroused, while it is a witness to the freedom of the human 
will and to the depravity of the human heart, is a testimony 
to His infinite power. That spiritual power, extraordinary 
and unique in itself, is represented naturally and inevitably 
as having extraordinary and unique consequences in relation 
to His own bodily life, and to that of others. On His part, 
and on theirs. His power was spiritually conditioned. The state- 
ment "He could there do no mighty work," associated with a 
reference to their unbelief,^ shows that the condition of His 
healing power lay in the influence of His spiritual authority, 
quickening here and there a spiritual life, and by His influence 
throughout it, working to the healing of disease, in a degree 
of which no other example can be found. The miraculous, 
therefore, in the gospels must be described and interpreted in 
its vital connection with the spiritual personality of Jesus, 
and must be illustrated by the fainter manifestations of 
such power in the life and influence of those immeasurably 
inferior to Him, who have yet exercised a spiritual ascend- 
ancy of an exceptional kind over their fellows. If in their 
lives there is the shadow of the miraculous, how much 
more the substance of it in one who so infinitely transcends 
them! 

Such is the general relationship in which the miraculous, 

» Mark vi. 5, 6. 



134 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

as it stands in the New Testament, is related to the unique 
character, work, and influence of Christ, and to the supreme 
epoch in the world's history at which He appeared. Granted 
all these, and the Eesurrection itself, in all the fullness of its 
material meaning, is essentially in keeping with the whole 
spiritual manifestation, and its revelation of the real nature, 
meaning, and end of the universe, and of the paramount forces 
within it. It is largely in the light of presuppositions, favor- 
able or unfavorable, that its evidence will be considered. 
That there are difficulties must be conceded. It is natural 
that there should be. Our philosophy of the fact must be 
adjusted to a new and enlarged conception of the relations 
between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. In the case 
of nature, there is more of the miraculous, in the sense of the 
direct activity of God, than is ordinarily understood; while 
the miraculous is truly natural, in the sense that it is not 
merely exceptional, but is interwoven with the whole texture 
of God's unceasing activity throughout the universe. Such a 
view does justice to the whole spirit of the New Testament, 
which is not lightly credulous or superstitiously ready to 
see violations of the ordinary course of things everywhere. 
Restraint, rationality, lifelikeness, subordination to a spiritual 
character and its spiritual ends, stand out most strikingly 
in the New Testament narratives of the miraculous, and put 
them in contrast with all other such narratives in the whole 
history of the world. The miraculous in the gospel is as 
ideal as the gospel itself. The Christ who wrought the 
spiritual transformation of the New Testament is the Christ 
to whom the miraculous is the natural. The Christ to the 
conception of whom the miraculous becomes impossible 
may remain an ethical ideal and inspiration, but will 
cease to be the Christ known in the inmost spiritual 
experience of the saints throughout all the generations that 
are past. 

The essential features which we have passed under review 
lead to the completion of the teaching of Christianity by its 
doctrine of the world-place of Christ, and by the doctrine of 
the Godhead which that world-place demands. Christ appears, 
as we have seen, according to Christian doctrine, first of all in 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 135 

a unique relation to the Father; secondly, in a unique relation 
to the spiritual life of His followers; thirdly, as a personality 
who in the fullness of His spiritual gifts and power transcends 
the ordinary conditions of human life. Each of these elements, 
separately, and, above all, these elements combined, are at the 
source of that doctrine of the relationship of the Son of God 
to the creation, the order, and the end of the world, which is 
contained in the writings of St. John, especially in the intro- 
duction to his Gospel, and in those of St. Paul, in the Epistle 
to the Colossians, in the most developed form. The divine 
relations and influence of Christ are the manifestations of 
Divinity. The Incarnation rests upon a prior and preparatory 
relation of the Son of God to the universe, which makes 
incarnation as a stage in an ordered development, and as the 
means of spiritual advance, possible. The presence of Jesus 
Christ in human history is the revelation of the subordination 
of the whole universe to those spiritual purposes which become 
manifest in Him. The state of Jewish theology or of Chris- 
tian speculation may have supplied the forms in which this 
doctrine is set, but it owes its essential features, not to them, 
but to the three great factors which have just been named, allied 
with certain other profound spiritual intuitions of the human 
heart. As a matter of fact, the whole secret of Christ's life from 
beginning to end is based upon His consciousness of a peculiar 
relationship to God. The whole faith of His disciples is based 
upon the peculiarity of their experience of salvation as derived 
from Him. Both are bound up with the belief in the super- 
natural nature of His personality. 

In addition to all these, and strengthening their testimony, 
is the deep sense that that which is manifest under con- 
ditions of finitude in the course of human history rests upon 
the eternity and infinity of God, and is a direct manifestation 
of Him; that all which is involved in the spiritual conscious- 
ness of Christ and of His disciples must be treated, not as an 
accidental happening, but as the utterance of the deepest 
secret of the constitution and meaning of the universe. With 
this is combined the sense of the universal sovereignty of the 
spiritual as the ruling end of all things. This sense is 
natural and vital in all periods of spiritual exaltation, and finds 



136 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

expression in that doctrine of "heirship" which sets forth St. 
Paul's habitual attitude towards the world of passing events, and 
of material conditions. 

These great influences are the explanation of the doctrine 
of Christ the Son, as the ground, the bond, and the end of 
all created things, and as securing through this relation to 
them their spiritual consummation. With the doctrine of 
the world-place of Christ, coupled with that of His relation 
to the Father on the one hand, and to the indwelling Divine 
Spirit on the other, there enters that doctrine of the Godhead 
as a triune fellowship of light and love which, found 
practically in the New Testament writings, is developed more 
or less successfully in the dogmatic teaching of the Christian 
Church. It represents, not a priori speculation as to the 
necessary conditions in which the divine life subsists, but, in 
the first place, the practical results of Christ's teaching, and 
of His disciples' experience of Him. These lead to such 
formulae as that of the apostolic Benediction, to the positive 
statements of the divinity of the Father, the Son, and the 
Spirit, which are found in the New Testament as the outcome 
of historic facts and of vital experience. In them is contained 
the material for a doctrine of the Godhead, which has been 
developed in successive stages, under manifold conditions and 
under the stress of almost continuous controversy. It is the last 
product, and the final safeguard of that experience of Christ 
which the New Testament sets forth. With it the essential 
content of Christianity is complete. 

The Christianity which has been outlined is the Chris- 
tianity which, as a living and connected whole, was manifest 
in the world during the first century of the Christian era. 
It is possible to abstract from it this or that element, but what 
is thus taken away remains an abstraction from the larger 
whole. Criticism may deal with this or that element, may 
even attempt to formulate the whole afresh; but that which 
is so dealt with becomes practically a new product, reached 
by some attempt like that of Dr. Martineau,* to separate the 
so-called divine from the so-called un-divine elements of 
Christianity. In so doing, a transformation takes place, 

1 The Seat of AvthorUy in Religion, 



THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 137 

which makes the new, not a revision of the old, but something 
essentially different from it. 

The problem of Christian Evidences is therefore to discover in 
wl'at relation the Christianity which has been outlined stands to 
the spiritual consciousness of manlvind, and to the interpretation 
of the universe as it is conceived in modern times. 



CHAPTER II 

THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 

THE subject which must next be considered is the 
relation of Christianity to other religions. It has 
been claimed that Christianity is the perfect religion, 
expressed through the final theology. If this claim is to be 
more than a mere assertion, it must be made good by exhibit- 
ing Christianity in its living relations to other religions, 
comparing and contrasting it with them. But in order that 
we may understand the relations in which Christianity stands 
to other religions, it is necessary to begin by considering the 
subject of religion in general, its characteristic features, its 
making, and its relation to the ordinary faculties of human 
life, before discussing the peculiarities of different types of 
religion. Many definitions of religion have been proposed 
from time to time; but speaking broadly, religion has always 
been understood to mean the consciousness of certain personal 
relations in which the religious man stands to a Divine 
Being or Beings; his conception of, and disposition towards 
that Being or those Beings, together with the character and 
conduct which result; including in this last both the moral 
temper and the particular rites and customs of outward 
observance. That which is essential in the minds of those 
who ordinarily speak of religion, however, is the realized 
relationship between persons, divine and human. This does 
not appear in some of the more recent definitions of religion. 
There are those who are anxious to preserve the religious 
temper, or certain elements of it, without having any belief 
in the reality of the generally recognized object of that 
temper, or at any rate in that object as capable of entering 

138 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 139 

into relations with the religious man. Such thinkers have, 
therefore, offered definitions of religion in which the element 
of personalit}^ in its object, and therefore of personal fellowship, 
ceases to be vital. Some speak vaguely of religion as being the 
sense of the Infinite. Matthew Arnold defined religion as 
"Morality touched with emotion.^^ Herbert Spencer treated the 
object of religion as being the inscrutable Power whose existence 
the universe manifests to us.^ 

Such definitions, however, offer to us pure abstractions. 
When we speak of morality touched with emotion^ the term 
morality is an abstraction; the common name for certain 
qualities which attach to certain kinds of action, and to the 
disposition which prompts to these actions. Emotion, again, 
is a general name for feelings which, as actually manifest, 
are of many kinds, and are determined by the sorts of objects 
which call them forth. Before such a definition as that of 
Matthew Arnold can be brought into relation to the facts of 
the world's life and history, it should be converted — even if 
the abstract term morality be allowed — into morality touched 
by affection; and this not towards the abstract quality called 
morality, but towards the source of morality — the authorit}% 
whatever it may be, from which it springs — and towards the 
ends which are proposed by that source to be realized tlirough 
morality. 

Again, religion has always addressed itself to its object, 
not as being unknown and unknowable, but as being Jcnown. 
Every religion has conceived its object; it may be under the 
concrete form of what we call an idol, but at any rate under 
the form which spiritual imagination has created for intuition 
and reason. It is true that, in developed forms of religion, 
the object, though worshiped as known, has been felt to be 
infinite, passing complete knowledge; that the intuitions and 
imaginations by which God is set forth, are felt to be in- 
adequate to represent all that He is and does. But the 
religion has rested upon that which is knowable of Him, and 
not upon that which is unknowable. Therefore those defini- 
tions which seek to suppress the personal in the object of 
religion, if applicable at all, are applicable only to a very 

1 First Principles, 3rd ed., p. 46. 



140 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGIOlir 

late stage in religion, and involve a deliberate thinking away 
from the usual and the historic sense of the term. Wherever 
religion has existed, this sense of personal relations has 
been characteristic of it, except where some crudeness in the 
conception of personality, or some distrust of the importance 
of personality as containing the key to the meaning of the 
universe, has occasioned a more or less philosophic revolt 
from the use made of it in popular religion. Wherever what 
seems to be the negation of personality becomes apparently 
the basis of religion, it is so because in some way or other 
imagination contributes to the object of religion the person- 
ality which reason denies. At least for the purposes of 
religious moods, the impersonal object of religion has to be 
credited by imagination with power, intention, and even in 
all higher forms with the moral qualities of justice and 
benevolence. Therefore, the conception of a real or supposed 
relationship between divine and human personality is essential 
to religion. 

In describing the elements of religion it is important to 
have a clear conception of what is meant. It would be futile 
to seek in the first instance for causes making a hitherto non- 
religious being religious; still more to suppose that such a 
change could be produced by deliberate reasoning or reflection. 
Any such explanation of the natural history of religion is 
untrue to the facts. 'Not if we speak of revelation, 
even in the case of the highest religion, must it be supposed that 
that revelation is given independently of, and externally to, the 
human faculties, both higher and lower, in their best exercise. 
To suppose this would involve a doctrine of the externality 
of God, which fails to realize His indwelling and all-compre- 
hending presence. If He is revealed, it is not merely to, 
but in and through, the human faculties which apprehend 
Him. What is necessary is a description, rather than a 
deduction, of religion; and of religion as manifesting in 
itself the working of certain factors, or as revealing the 
presence of certain elements, which are native to the human 
spirit. 

Two cautions must, however, be borne in mind. First of 
all there is a diflficulty about all origins. If we attempt to 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 141 

realize how man became what he is, we have to think our- 
selves back into a condition of existence in which he was not 
what he is, and this we are utterly unable to represent to 
ourselves, except in the most incomplete manner. How man's 
consciousness became what it now is, is therefore almost 
incapable of investigation, and gives rise to the wildest 
guesses when it is attempted. And in the next place, religion 
manifests itself as a complex whole, which is developed quite 
as soon as the factors which go to make it up, and far earlier 
than the comparatively mature forms of these factors which 
we can reflectively examine by a psychological inquiry. The 
factors of religion, moreover, exist in organic union, and do 
not work in mechanical separation. It is possible for pur- 
poses of abstraction and description to regard them as 
isolated elements, but in actual fact they never exist in 
such isolation. 

Religion, understood in its general sense of personal relation- 
ship with the Divine, offers itself as the satisfaction of the 
needs of self-conscious beings. It arises in some form or 
other by a natural necessity, and universally, as soon as men 
become self-conscious, realizing themselves as at once part 
of what we call nature, and distinct from it; as members also 
of a human fellowship which is developed, alike because they 
are superior to nature and because they are united with it. 
When self-consciousness is thus realized, the consciousness of 
God is in some sense given. There will probably be general 
agreement about this, the only question being whether, or 
how far, what is thus presented to men as real, is truly so 
or not. Thus it may be affirmed that religion is natural to 
man, but only in proportion as in the development of self- 
consciousness he comes to realize that he is supernatural 
himself. The old conception that religion is a merely artificial 
institution, established by the decree of rulers, or by the 
device of priests for their own selfish purposes, has long been 
abandoned. 'No doubt the influence of rulers and of priests 
exerted for the ends of their own order, has put deep marks 
upon religion in various times and places throughout the 
world's history. But the power of priefit and ruler has 
been dependent upon manifold emotions, Instincts, and needs 



142 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

already present. They did not create the religious disposition 
which they manipulated, hut only availed themselves of it. 
This shallow view set up by antagonists of religion corre- 
sponded to a similarly shallow and abstract view of religion 
set forth by the defenders of religion, who conceived it as 
being due to a purely external revelation, established and 
proved by merely external signs and sanctions. Upon this 
basis the old theologians entered into elaborate discussions as 
to the antecedent probability of revelation, and as to the 
means by which a revelation could be recognized when it 
came. Their arguments were vitiated by the same imperfect 
conception as that of their antagonists. They treated man 
as though he came into the world complete for all the natural 
purposes of his life without religion, as though religion were 
a totally distinct and separate faculty in human life, and as 
if the divine supply of spiritual needs came entirely from 
outside and worked in independence of the spiritual needs 
which it met. Moreover, the divine gift, thus bestowed, has 
been treated as conveying regulative information, rather than 
spiritual satisfaction. The relationship of religion to the human 
spirit is much more inward and vital than this. Speak- 
ing broadly, it may be claimed that man is never 
man until he is religious, and is only man so far as he is in some 
sense religious. 

Upon this basis an attempt may be made to set forth the 
factors which are present in man's experience as he attains to 
developed self-hood in the world, and to detect the religious and 
theological implications involved. It will probably then become 
apparent that exactly the same faculties, which when they are 
applied to the part are called natural when they are applied to 
the whole, as presented to a fully developed self-consciousness, 
become religious and yield theological results. The same con- 
siderations which enable us to explain the perfect result of 
religion, may probably be useful in accounting for its variations 
when incomplete or abnormal. 

I. It is necessary in the first place, and above all, to note 
that man is primarily an active being. From the first he 
seeks to satisfy his needs by activity, and as his activity in 
the effort to satisfy needs is developed, it becomes in the end 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 143 

deliberately purposive. If a description of human develop- 
ment from its rudimentary to its highest stages is wanted, an 
account must above all be given of the activity put forth 
by men in order to satisfy needs. Man's development is 
measured by the range of his needs, and of the action 
initiated to satisfy them. Thought is apparent first of all in 
action, and for the purposes of action: though the self -dis- 
tinguishing which is essential to activity leads early to the 
manifestation of curiosity in man as to forms of activity not 
his own. Hence secondarily the mind comes to embody the 
results of action in abstract or purely intellectual forms. It 
begins by fixing as rules the conditions of successful activity 
which have been hit upon by accident, impulse, or guess-work, 
previously. 

But as such action to meet wants grows in range and 
acquires increased power to appropriate and transform nature 
to the needs of man, its success is due to that compelling of 
nature, which is at the same time an acceptance of the 
fundamental conditions which nature lays down. The rela- 
tion to nature into which the successfully active man is 
brought is a relation in which mastery and obedience are one 
and indivisible. The very effort to shape nature to his ends 
involves an attempt to read the meaning of nature itself. The 
result, so far as it is successful, involves not the victory of man 
over nature, or of nature over man, but what may be termed a 
sympathetic cooperation between the two. In the attempt at 
sympathetic cooperation, reason — ^by which is meant comprehen- 
sion of the whole — is apparent; first of all in an intuitive and 
practical, later on in a reflective form. This successful action 
involves making trial by means of assumptions as to the 
behavior of nature, which are first of all instinctively adopted, 
then tested by experience, finally remembered and collected. 
From this trial of nature proceed rules and principles for dealing 
with nature. 

The whole of this process involves an instinctive belief in 
the solidarity of nature with man. His principles as they 
become mature are its principles or laws. They have been 
found by him as he came to the full exercise of self-conscious- 
ness in unity with nature, and yet in distinction from it. 



144 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

He has come to this body of principles by his own experiment, 
yet they speak back to him from nature as being its conditions. 
They were his, and would never have been discovered by him 
except in action, but they belong to it. 

Herein is the first manifestation of that anthropomorphism, 
of which, in even the narrowest exercise of mind under the 
least spiritual categories, man cannot divest himself — anthropo- 
morphism, which grows from stage to stage, until it comes to 
the completest and most formal efforts to explain the world. 
Man can never get outside himself. He finds himself in finding 
nature; in finding nature he realizes himself. Whenever he 
tries to escape from what is called anthropomorphism, he 
escapes only from an element of it, in order to take refuge in 
the residue which is left. That residue may be extremely 
vague; but however vague it may be, it is yet something 
which appears in his own consciousness. In that case, man 
finds in nature something answering to his own mood of self- 
suppression. Thus as the world appears to distinguish itself 
from the mind which acts upon it, and to look back upon the 
actor, it always does so through the forms by which man has 
approached it, and which he has imposed upon it. It looks 
back upon him, therefore, naturally, according to the vigor 
of his activity, with the aspect of personality and will, in the 
idea of an end sought and of means used. It may do so at 
first as a vaguely realized whole. By-and-by, in some 
instances, at least, it will do so through each lesser whole 
which man calls a thing. Later on, it will be assemblages or 
grouped wholes which thus look back upon him through the 
eyes of personality. Eventually, as a naturalizing process 
goes on, it may be only, or chiefly, through that 
which appears dominant among these outward things. Por 
example, the practice of sun-worship, where the world, as a 
whole, is tending to sink to what we understand by nature, is 
an illustration of this. In doing man good and harm, the sun 
appears to him, under certain spiritual conditions, with the eyes 
of personality. By-and-by, the universe itself may become to 
man a complete system, under which all lesser groups have 
been brought, and to which, as a whole, will and purpose out- 
side himself are seen to be related in the same way that in 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 145 

his own consciousness they are related to the instruments which 
he uses for gaining his ends. Thus, when the world, as merely 
natural, comes to be clearly distinguished from man, the per- 
sonality in it, which man had confused with it, is placed above 
and behind it, just as at that stage he has placed his own 
personality above and behind the system with which at one time 
he confused himself. 

In all this personifying activity man is assisted by the 
fact that he already knows other personal wills than his own. 
He knows the wills of his fellows as being sometimes in 
conflict, and sometimes in agreement, with his own. Per- 
haps also he seems to himself to know other wills than those of 
his fellow men. The ghost, for example, which has appeared to 
him in the dark or in his dreams, and has seemed to bid him 
to do something, may help him to transfer the reality of self- 
hood to existences outside the present sphere of human life. 
But whatever may have been the force of subsidiary influences, 
the main conclusion is that as man has become an active and 
purposive being in the world, he has found in the world with 
which he deals a purpose akin to, harmonizing with, and when 
his dependence upon it is taken into account, regulative of his 
own. 

This discovery is the basis upon which special recognition 
of design in nature is ultimately built up. The argument 
from design in nature represents the last reflective expression 
of that appearance of personality and purpose in the universe 
which can only be so interpreted by fully developed persons. 
As man studies in the light of his own will the fashioning of 
the world, whether as an organic system attaining ends, or as 
containing particular objects which can only be explained as 
seeking ends, he is compelled to invoke the same principles by 
which he has explained the direct action of the world upon 
himself. 

II. But if man is active, and eventually comes to be pur- 
posive, equally is he dependent, and comes to realize growingly 
his dependence. He is conditioned by sense. The world 
which he interprets and molds to his needs by means of 
principles and rules drawn from his own activity, from the 
first shapes and controls that activity. It presents through 



146 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the senses the content upon which his activity is exercised, 
and limits the range of his efforts in dealing with that content. 
This conditioning through sense is not, on the whole, as at 
first it might seem, a rough interference with his activity. It 
may be sharply distinguished from his activity in thought, 
but the limits which condition man are given from the first 
through his consciousness, in perfect union with his activity, and 
the limitations of his senses serve the purposes of his practical 
activity. 

At the same time, the sphere in which man moves is 
discovered, as his consciousness of selfhood becomes developed, 
to be the not-self. If it is a sphere fitted for his activity, it 
is yet distinguished from him, and may check, and even 
punish his untutored spontaneity. Indeed, in the end it may 
defeat his elaborate purposes, unless they are framed with due 
regard for and with adequate experience of the world in which 
he lives. Yet his primary experience is that of a limiting 
world, which, within these limits, rewards his activity and 
nourishes his life. The first lesson man learns about his 
dependence comes to him through the combined associations of 
bounty and restraint. And this experience of dependence is 
not abstract. Man is not conscious in general of being a 
dependent existence, loose, seeking for a point to which to 
attach himself. Such an abstract situation may figure in 
theology, but never in real life. A dependent being in 
vacuo has never actually existed. Indeed, man generally 
has no abstract idea of dependence at all, and probably when 
he realizes most fully that he is dependent, he is quite in- 
capable of that conception. He is supported, fed, surrounded, 
and checked by the universe which he perceives. The joint 
influence of bounty and control which the universe exercises 
over him is mediated in his infancy through the family 
into which he is born. It is in relation to the family that he 
comes to realize first both his selfhood and his dependence. 
Persons, so far as he can apprehend persons, are more 
influential than things. Things, for the most part, reach 
him only through persons, and, therefore, the experience of 
dependence upon the universe is apprehended first of all as 
dependence upon persons, who mediate the universe for him; 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 147 

controlling the causes by which it affects him. That upon y^hich, 
therefore, man is dependent is felt and perceived, not abstractly 
conceived; and in the perception of dependence is given an in- 
cipient characterization of that upon which he depends, which 
grows more determinate as his consciousness becomes developed. 
That upon which he is ultimately dependent is intuitively treated 
as personal, just as soon as, and in so far as man knows himself 
to be personal, and to be surrounded by persons other than him- 
self. The conception of its personality is made possible and is 
deepened by the influence of those personalities which have 
controlled his own infancy. 

In so far as man distinguishes himself from nature, he 
distinguishes the Being which controls him, and upon which 
he is dependent, from nature. For through his own activity 
man learns instinctively his practical supremacy over nature; 
while, in so far as his experience teaches him that he is 
subject, he conceives that nature is subject also. Indeed, 
as he comes to have a determinate conception of things, as such, 
though this is at a late stage, nature becomes to him an 
assemblage of quasi-individuals, which all exist together on 
precisely those terms of dependence of which he is himself 
conscious. 

Thus nature, as such, is apprehended as selfhood is 
realized, and when nature, as such, is apprehended, it sinks 
from the position of the absolute and supreme to that of the 
relative and dependent. Hence as this process continues, and 
man realizes his own selfhood, with its limited supremacy 
over nature, that upon which he is dependent becomes to him 
a Supreme, Self-conscious Being, which is more or less free 
from the limitations to which he knows himself to be subject. 
Hence his Supreme Being is taken out of nature, and is seen 
as having varying degrees of power over nature. In some 
cases it is only a mighty apotheosized ancestor. This con- 
ception represents to him in its fullest sense the paternal — 
or in some cases maternal — authority which he first knew in his 
home, carried by means of death and subsequent exaltation 
into a position to exercise influence unthwarted by the 
limitations of sense. In some cases the sun or the heavens 
are taken artificially out of the sphere of dependent beings 



148 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

and treated as the manifestation of that Supreme Self which 
stands in contrast to finite selves and to the finitude of nature. 
In the purest expression of it, the conception is of one Supreme 
Self, seen in complete detachment from, and superiority to, all 
such creaturely existence. 

Thus with the growing definition of himself and of nature as 
finite, there comes to man the sense of the Infinite as the correla- 
tive. With the growing realization of selfhood comes the realiza- 
tion of that Infinite as the Divine Self. And with the mingled 
sense of power over nature, and of subjection to it, the Divine 
Self is ultimately seen to wield completely the supremacy which 
man feels to be due to the spiritual in himself, strives after, but 
never completely attains. 

There have been two great types in which this ultimate 
result, the realization of the Infinite as over against the finite, 
has been exhibited, according as intellectual mysticism, with 
its constant depreciation of practical life, has prevailed, or 
ethical religion, with its enforcement of the power and 
responsibilities of, personality. In India there has been 
a reaction, which will be considered later on, against the worth 
and meaning of active personality. Therefore, the Infinite 
Self Brahma, becomes conceived as impersonal and inactive 
thought; all activity being due, first of all to a cosmic, and 
then to a human illusion. On the other hand, in Old Testa- 
ment religion the ethical prevails; the worth of active 
personality is realized, and therefore the Infinite Self is seen 
in the glory of perfect and supreme activity as Creator. The 
finite world of men and things is the effect of His activity, 
as first and spiritually perfect cause. The two types are as 
widely contrasted as possible, yet each according to its manner 
gives expression to the presentation of the Infinite, and 
especially to the sense that that upon which the finite self 
is dependent can only be an Infinite Self. Each represents 
the final expression of the sense of dependence, not upon 
a merely outward and similarly finite being, but on an Infinite 
given within the spiritual consciousness itself, whose presence 
within that consciousness reveals oneness and distinction in 
combination. The Brahmin treats that distinction as some- 
thing to be overcome that he may sink, or rise, into the 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 149 

absolute oneness of impersonal and unconscious life with the 
unconscious Infinite. The Hebrew preserves both the oneness 
and the distinction, and expresses both in the consciousness 
of spiritual and moral relations, the worth of which depends 
upon a perfect balance between oneness and distinction being 
maintained in a fellowship which demands the completeness 
and not the suppression of personality, on both sides of the 
relationship. 

III. The experience of man, as an active and yet as 
a dependent being, brings him to realize the presence of 
superior purpose in the world, and to realize the sources of 
that purpose as personal, as akin to himself, as bountiful, and 
yet as restraining. The relations between persons, however, 
are not merely external and practical; they are, above all, 
affectional. They gravitate towards one or other of two 
extremes; the one of love and trust, the other of hate and 
fear. Whether they tend towards the one or the other, 
though sometimes influenced by subtle personal affinities or 
antipathies, is largely determined according as wills, bound 
together in nexus of social relationships, agree and serve, 
or oppose one another. In the former case the personal 
relations tend towards love and gratitude, as from an in- 
ferior to a superior; towards love and friendship, as between 
equals. In the latter case the clash of wills, as between equals, 
sets up a state of resentment, which may pass into steady 
hatred, or, in the case of the disposition of an inferior to a 
superior, into the emotion of fear. But human life, as we know 
it, is only possible as relations of love and trust come first. Man 
and the beginnings of home arise together. Indeed, human 
progress is conditioned by the evolution of the home. It may 
fairly be said, that the measure of human development is 
determined by the extent of infantile weakness on the one 
hand, and of parental care on the other. For all human 
progress has depended upon the strengthening of the parental 
bond and the enlargement of the parental influence. That 
influence becomes a human providence, calling forth and 
satisfying an answering affection in the child until home is 
made an ever larger sphere of education and of fellowship. 
Hence human progress means advancement in love and in 



150 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the manifestations of it. And this not only because of the in- 
trinsic worth of love, still less on account of its emotional 
element, but for its practical power, and spiritual potency, as 
shaping character, determining conduct, and modeling the form. 
of the relations upon which conduct depends. 

It is from a first experience of love, which approaches 
most nearly to the family instincts so strikingly present in 
many of the lower animals, that the child in a human family 
grows up, receiving and returning a parental affection which 
has larger spiritual manifestations with every growth of his 
faculties. So dominant is this spirit of love in the true and 
normal experience of childhood, that the instinctive affection 
of the child which responds to it tends to overflow the 
personal relations in which he has experienced it, and to 
expect it outside them. He makes advances to strangers 
until he is repelled by them. He lavishes his affection on 
things by personalizing them, until his growing intelligence 
shows that they cannot return, and therefore cannot receive 
the affection which he has spent upon them. Hence there 
is an intensity in the affection of love and trust developed within 
the home, which causes it to make trial of the world by over- 
flowing to it, even to the extent of fictitiously creating in childlike 
fancy personal objects, towards which this affection may be 
manifested. 

But it is very clear that if certain family groups are 
found in union, certain others are found in opposition. 
The family groups and the hostile clans exist side by side. The 
relations of love within the one have combined with them 
relations of enmity towards the other. The intense affection 
which prevails within the family is repulsed when it manifests 
itself outside the family. It is itself gradually reversed, 
and the education which cultivates love and loyalty within the 
family is equally used to cultivate hatred and opposition to 
those who belong to an unfriendly clan. Hence the very 
vividness of clan-fellowship has meant a similar vividness 
of hatred between rival clans. For it is only gradually and as 
the supreme fruit of human evolution that intensity of love 
and intimacy of fellowship widens in range from family to 
clan, from clan to associations of clans, and ultimately to a 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 151 

national or even larger unity. It has done so under the forms, 
real or supposed, of the family. Common fatherhood generally 
determines common fellowship, and where common fellowship 
has arisen it has been based on either the reality or the supposi- 
tion of common fatherhood;^ a descent perhaps from some heroic 
ancestor, who has been deified, and who acts as divine patron of 
the association of tribes in such-wise as to manifest something 
like the guardianship of the home, and to call forth a common 
filial response. 

Thus man^s relations are, in the first place, with persons; 
in the second, with nature as quasi-personal. These personal 
relations are of necessity affectional, and tend towards one or 
the other of the opposite poles of love and faith, or of hatred 
and fear. This fact is of immediate religious significance. 
As has been seen, the activity of man personalizes either 
nature or its cause; while his sense of dependence leads him 
to realize that this personality, whether he confuses it with 
nature or sees it as apart from nature, whether it is one or 
manifold, controls his life. He conceives, according to the 
stage of his rational development, that it does this either 
steadily or only impulsively, that it has an absolute or only 
a qualified supremacy over him, that it is one or that it is 
many. But, however it may be in all these respects, the 
Supreme realized as personal exercises an influence over his 
own life. Immediately the Supreme, whether one or many, 
becomes the object of affections. The nature of these 
affections is determined by the relationships in which, and 
the conduct by which, the Supreme is made manifest. 
Eventually such conduct is treated as springing out of moods: 
the Divine Being is either pleased or angry. If the mani- 
festations are steady and constant, they reveal character. 
The more intimately connected with the clan-life, probably 
the more helpful, and therefore the more fatherly, is the 
Supreme. Such a Being, therefore, is treated with trust 
and love. The more remote from the relations constituting the 
clan-life, in all probability the more hostile will he be; he 
therefore becomes the object of fear. If the phenomena of 
the natural world are personalized, then it is obvious that 

1 Occasionally of common motherhood. 



152 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

some arouse fear and some arouse trust. The brightness of 
the dawn, for example, suggests beneficence, while the dark- 
ness of the storm-cloud suggests anger and danger. Hence 
under such conditions the deities in or behind such pheno- 
mena are deities whose fellowship is to be cultivated, or 
whose appearance and activity is to be warded off. If 
there is some vague unification of the whole of nature, then its 
differing manifestations succeeding one another, either in 
time or in man's successive experience of them, are treated 
as indicating different modes of the divine. It may be that 
the Sun or the Heavens is treated as the embodiment of the 
Divine Person who controls the life. In that case the radiant 
heavens and the genial sun are signs of favor, while the 
smiting sun-ray, an eclipse, or a storm-cloud, is indicative 
of wrath. 

The Divine seen to be personal and supreme, felt to be 
in active relationship with the man thus conscious of Him, 
becomes necessarily the object of affections. Hence just as 
the progress of man as man within the limited human sphere 
depends upon his growth in love and trust, the development 
of parental care calling forth the filial response, so it is as 
to his progress in regard to the whole range of human life. 
Man's development depends entirely upon his growing realiza- 
tion that the Supreme is the object of trust. The temper of 
trust responding to beneficence must gradually overbalance 
and subordinate the emotion of fear as called forth towards 
that which is unfriendly and threatening in man's environ- 
ment. The good must at least have some measure of 
supremacy, whether this be conceived as limited, or whether 
advance is made to a spiritual optimism which treats good as 
absolute, and as so powerful that it transforms apparent evil 
into real good. Only as this spirit prevails, and as principles 
of conduct based upon it steadily direct conduct, does 
human life in any progressive sense of the term become possible. 
Where fear predominates in religion, so that before its 
advance the brighter and more beneficent aspects of life have 
faded away, this prevalence is the last evidence of human 
degeneracy, and affects man's whole outlook upon the world. 
It is probably accompanied and prepared for by the moral 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 153 

and social evils of an undeveloped home. It is accentuated by 
specially unfavorable circumstances in the physical environment. 
Yet even when fear, instead of qualifying the more genial aspects 
of religion, seems to have entirely swallowed them up, the spirit 
of trust to some extent vindicates its claims. For the divinity 
which is treated as maleficent, and which therefore inspires 
fear, can be propitiated, and religion becomes then an apparatus 
for propitiating or driving away the harmful Divine. 
Human life is impossible under the reign of unmitigated 
fear, and where trust is displaced from its supremacy, it 
lingers to the very verge of the extinction of spiritual and 
moral sense, in order to make the slender remainder of life 
possible. 

But when fear predominates it is not a fear introduced 
from outside by religion. Such a view rests upon an entirely 
false psychology. It is not that religion, as a malign in- 
fluence, has entered from without, first of all to qualify and 
then to destroy the experience of an otherwise joy-inspiring 
world. It is that, owing to various evil influences, those 
phenomena in the world which occasion fear have first been 
personalized, and then-their predominance in the world has 
been unduly emphasized. A religion of fear is not the first 
cause, but the last result, of an experience of the world which 
is felt to be fearful. Doubtless, after men have reached this 
pitiable attitude towards the world, and have fashioned their 
religion in accordance with it, the religion reacts upon their 
whole outlook, and, with the conservative influence that 
religion often exercises, deepens the impression, and 
turns the instinctive habits which grow out of that impression 
into a standard of life. On the other hand, if through 
any cause, perhaps a new and more favorable experience 
of nature, a new uplifting of disposition from mysterious 
depths within the spirit takes place, then with a more 
genial experience or interpretation of nature, fear falls away, 
and with it religion is at once transformed. Then if its 
outward forms remain, a new significance is attached to 
them. Always a religion of fear is the result, and is not 
the cause; is derived from an unfortunate temperament, or 
an unfavorable experience of the universe as such, and 



154 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

not brought in or received from without as chastening natural 

joy- 
By what relationship, then, shall this experience of 

kinship with, of dependence upon, and of confidence in the 
Divine, which dawns on the spirit under ordinary conditions, 
be expressed? The relationship lies ready to hand in Father- 
hood; or occasionally where the organization of society is 
different, in Motherhood. In some cases, as in the Semitic 
races, and particularly among the Hebrews, what is chiefly felt 
is the supremacy of the Absolute as over against the Finite. 
Where this is so, lordship or sovereignty is conceived as 
being the true relationship of the Divine to the human. 
Even then the conception of lordship will be found to be an 
abstraction from the paternal. It is one of the aspects of 
fatherhood, becoming dominant as lordship is emphasized, 
first of all within the family, as one of the attributes of 
fatherhood, then in the tribe or nation, as its head becomes 
king, and finally in theology, as the experience of king- 
ship upon earth is extended to the conception of kingship in 
heaven. According as the element of authority in father- 
hood grows, fatherhood is transformed into sovereignty. To 
some extent, at this stage sovereignty in religion may come to 
emphasize the opposition between God and man rather than 
their kinship. Yet even then, through his special relation of 
lordship, the Supreme is fatherly towards his subjects, although 
his fatherhood may be receding into the background, and may 
need some special influence, if it is once more to be made 
manifest. 

Hence, wherever the apprehension of the relationship 
between God and man as that of fatherhood takes place, 
there is at once action and reaction between the ideals of 
theology and the ideals of human life.^ The human standard 
is inevitably applied to God. Man makes God in his own image. 
The ideal of what is accepted as truly human becomes the ideal 
of the Divine. When so accepted, this ideal tends to accentuate 



1 This action and reaction may take place where the relationship is con- 
ceived as that of kinship rather than that of fatherhood and sonship. Tliis 
is the case, for example, in totemism, where, owing to the organization of the 
family, kinship is insisted upon, while fatherhood is in the background. 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 155 

mid promote a spirit and conduct in human relationships which 
is modeled after that of the Divine. In especial, the more love 
becomes ascendant in man, the more likely, apart from other 
modifying influences, will it be to be attributed in the highest 
and noblest sense to God. 

ly. With the recognition of Divine Personality as in control 
of human life comes the connection between religion and 
morality. This connection exists more or less from the very 
birth of each. The Divine is the ultimate source of moral 
authority as recognized in primitive life; it shapes the 
standard and rules of conduct, and vindicates them by sanc- 
tions of rewards and punishments. In this way the Supreme 
Being is conceived as being moral just so far as His worshipers 
have themselves become moralized. Individuals and the 
community are involved together, but the combination of in- 
dividuals in the community is only possible through law. The 
interests and order of the community, without which it is im- 
possible, must have authority to control the desires of the indi- 
vidual, so far as they diverge from the accepted standard, or 
interfere with the common well-being. Thus the existence of 
the community, whether in the narrowest unit of the family, 
or in its widest circles, is impossible without the enforcement 
of a common law. Upheld by a social sanction, and, if needs 
be, by the application of force, the possibility of maintaining 
such a law within the community turns upon the inward recog- 
nition on the part of the members of the community that it is 
right, and that there is an obligation to obey it. To outward 
law, therefore, corresponds the inner sense of obligation. The 
authority is exercised by means of the authoritative person. 
Such a person, the recognized head of the tribe, for the most 
part, is the responsible trustee of the traditions of the past, which 
it is his duty to enforce, and to apply to the conditions of the 
present. In so acting, he gives expression, by virtue of his 
position, to the general sense of the community, and is met by 
its obedience, or is supported by its approval and strength in 
repressing and punishing the disobedient. To put individual 
desire before the obligation to obey the will of the community, 
as thus expressed, is rebellion. 

Yet the whole of this common life depends upon the sense 



156 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

of obligation to obey. Only when it exists does the community, 
in the most elementary sense of the term, become possible. 
For the purposes, therefore, of explaining man, the sense of 
obligation must be treated as original. Attempts are con- 
stantly made to deduce it; to derive it from elements more 
primitive than itself. It cannot be said that such attempts 
have succeeded. To treat the sense of obligation as being 
simply respect for superior force, vrith the material punish- 
ment which it can apply, or as springing from fear of opinion, 
with its manifestation of disapproval in social ostracism, seems 
exactly to miss the mark. Powerful to influence the sense of 
obligation when it is present, there seems nothing in these in- 
fluences to create it. They are powerless to bridge the gulf 
between "I must" and "I ought." It is the wisest course to at- 
tempt to explain a human faculty or a deliverance of human 
nature, not in its most rudimentary, but in its most developed 
form. And the sense of obligation in its most developed form 
is often clearly exhibited in the very refusal to conform either 
to superior force or to the pressure of popular opinion. Indeed, 
the acutest penitence may often be felt when the sense of 
obligation has been sacriflced to either of these. 

But even supposing that the sense of obligation to obey 
could be explained by influences which do not already assume 
its presence, when it appears it becomes a new and altogether 
higher thing than that from which it is derived. It clearly 
enters upon a course of fresh and independent development. 
It is with it just as it would be if the genesis of life itself 
could be explained as directly due, without any addition, to 
some complex combination of non-living elements. Supposing 
such an explanation should be successfully made out, life would 
still remain for all scientific purposes a new thing, to be 
investigated on its own principles, and not on the principles 
of the more primitive elements from which it had been derived. 
A theory of how phenomena came to be cannot be allowed to 
destroy the evidence contained within them of what they now 
are. Hence, even were the attempts to derive the sense of 
obligation more successful than they have hitherto been, they 
could not alter the facts as to what that sense is, and as to the 
way in which it works in the consciousness of historic man. 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 157 

as he recognizes social obligation, and knows himself to be the 
subject of duty. 

Eeligion and morality came into existence together^ Eeli- 
gion provides sanctions for the current morality; morality as 
accepted provides the forms under which the Divine Being is 
characterized. As to this latter, we have seen that man's 
purposive activity compels him to discover, or at least to 
imagine, purposive activity in or behind the world itself. 
Every step forward, therefore, in moralizing his own activity, 
naturally leads him to take a corresponding step forward in 
moralizing the activity which confronts him in or behind the 
world. 

In the same way, in respect of man's dependence, everything 
which enlarges the sense of dependence and brings home its 
inwardness, causes the social fabric and the mprality on which 
it rests to be seen as also dependent. Its source is traced 
back to the Divine. Thus human law and human morality, 
which strives to express itself through law, are seen to rest 
upon divine legislation, and to be upheld by divine power. 
Hence, the moralized divinity vindicates and upholds the laws 
and customs of moralized society. Thus there is a twofold 
exchange; morality enlarges the meaning of religion; religion 
in its turn becomes the conservator of accepted morality. In so 
far as moral ideals become predominant in the community, mere 
nature-worship becomes impossible, and the divinity represents, 
above all, the fulfillment and the upholder of the moral ideal 
which prevails. Here is a turning-point in the history of 
religion. 

This state of things, on the whole, exists through long 
periods of human development. As moral individuality, however, 
grows, if it is accompanied with a keener sense of religious de- 
pendence, the contrary may be exhibited. The individual in 
whom a superior moral standard begins to manifest itself, coupled 
with a deep sense of religious obligation, may stand out as a 
breaker of the accepted law and as def 3dng the accepted standards 
of moral conduct, in order that he may assert a nobler morality 
or inaugurate a higher civilization. In such cases t]ie religion 
which usually upholds the past breaks away from it by means of 
a great religious and living personality. And by this breach 



158 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

religion sets up morality on a religions basis as independent of 
and higher than human law. On the other hand, if moral 
individuality advances without so keen a sense of dependence 
upon the divine, there may take place such a breach between 
the accepted religion and the new morality as was witnessed 
in Greece, where the popular religion and the new morality of 
the philosophers became growingly divergent. Morality then 
becomes a force making for progress, largely in independence of 
religion. It seeks a new basis in reasoned philosophy, giving to 
this new basis a more or less religious character. It turns its 
criticism, and even its opposition, upon the current religion 
which has failed to keep pace with it. Speaking broadly, how- 
ever, the religious view of the world is made up by fusion of the 
contributions brought by every human faculty. Hence morality, 
as it is evolved in the course of human progress, takes its part 
in fashioning the religion which from the first is bound up with 
it, and the theology by which the nature of the divine object of 
religion is set forth. 

V. While all these elements are active in the development 
of religion, one additional element must be added. It may 
perhaps be called the desire of the Infinite, which manifests 
itself more or less in all deliberate efforts after progress, yet 
is unexhausted and unsatisfied by them all. This desire of 
the Infinite is provoked, and not satisfied, by means, not only 
of failure, but even of success within the limits of the finite. 
At every step of his development powers within man are 
unfolded which constrain him to remold the finite to a larger 
and deeper assimilation with himself. Every such effort, 
however, is but a relative and partial success. When all his 
activity has been spent upon the world in which he lives, its 
imperfection stands out in contrast to that vision of the ideal 
which appears to him in the glory of a sunlit but hazy 
dawn. 

As he seeks a complete system, entirely subservient to the 
ends of life, the world breaks in upon him as incoherent here 
and there. The growing depth and range of his sympathies 
cause him to find it hard and unsympathetic. The very vastness 
of his desires brings home to him its insufficiency. He is 
forced to make trial of it. The higher, the more comprehensive. 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 159 

and the intenser his energies, the more continuous and com- 
prehensive must be his efforts to discover in the world, or to 
create in it, that which answers to himself. The more strenuous 
his endeavor, the more disappointing, in the ideal sense, 
becomes the result. Hence the human spirit, working under 
this great compulsion to subdue a more or less refractory world 
to itself, is forced to seek the contrary of the world as its goal. 
The Infinite, and not the finite, becomes growingly the object 
and the home of religion. The effort which has supplied reli- 
gious inspiration to the finite ends by taking refuge in the 
Infinite; the two being held together in balance, and seldom, 
if ever, completely fused. The desire for the Infinite may 
take distinct forms, according as certain elements in it become 
predominant, and either extinguish or subordinate the rest. 
There may be a desire for the intellectual Infinite — the One 
and All of Pantheistic thought — ever hovering between the 
two extremes of absolute nothingness and of all-including 
reality. The mysticism of Indian philosophy and of some 
phases of philosophical thought in Greece illustrates this tend- 
ency. Or the desire for the Infinite may take an inspirational 
form, representing an emotional endeavor to escape from the 
bonds of the finite. To this phase belong all those ecstatic move- 
ments of religious life which it is sometimes the object of re- 
ligious arts to excite. The best known of such phenomena are 
the Bacchic orgies in Greece or the rites of Cybele in Asia Minor 
in ancient times. Down to the present, occasional outbursts of 
such manifestations take place. 

Or, lastly, there may be the desire for the moral Infinite, for 
the goal of ethical perfection in human life, and for the Divine 
Being, as already realizing in Himself the perfection which is 
sought for as the supreme end of human effort. This last has 
power to absorb, as elements necessary to itself, both the intel- 
lectual and the emotional demands which have been just noticed. 
This perfection in the Infinite appears as the supreme end which 
is sought by religion ; its nature being determined by the elements 
which are uppermost in the subjective spiritual life of the 
worshipers. 

With the growing influence of the Infinite as the home of 
religion comes the growing desire after the divine object of 



160 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

religion, conceived as infinite; that is, as transcending, in the 
glory of His character and His power, the narrow limitations, 
whether of the finite world or of the finite spirit. As the goal 
and the object, so the Divine Being is felt to be the source of 
the life which seeks Him. He who at first was made in the 
likeness of the finite is at last seen in His perfection as being in 
contrast to the finite, invested with all the attributes with which 
the forms of human consciousness inevitably clothe Him, but 
realizing in Himself that of which human faculties come short, 
alike in their range, their intensity, their purity, and their 
fruition. 

Where this last influence is strongly felt, religion becomes 
the most pervasive desire and emotion of life. Its response to 
the divine may take various forms, according to the differences 
both of inward and of outward experience. In some moods or 
stages the intuitive realization of oneness with the Infinite may 
supersede alike all sense of difference and all need of effort. 
More normally, such union is seen as the goal of effort, the prize, 
not only of the conquest of spiritual evil, but of a self- 
surrender which takes manifold forms — active and passive — 
according as the Divine Will is apprehended in regard to the 
tasks of life. 

VI. All the factors thus seen to be present in religious life 
are stirred into activity by particular events. Were the world 
in which man lives absolutely stationary and unchanging, none 
of these powers, or demands, or axioms (whatever they may 
be called), would ever be stirred into life. It is because change 
takes place in the world outside him that man recognizes a 
world other than himself, and proceeds at once both to distin- 
guish it from himself and to assimilate it to his own life. It 
is the changes which take place in the world that are attributed 
at the outset to the volition of a personal and controlling 
Divine Being. The occasional rather than the permanent 
affects the mind of man; the particular rather than the 
universal. This is the case, in the first place, with the 
phenomena of nature. The striking manifestation of change 
involved in the sunrise after darkness, in the overclouding of 
the sky in storm, in the eclipse of the sun, or the appearance 
of the rainbow, all these indicate the activity of a Divine 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 161 

Being, other than, yet akin to, man himself, whose activity is 
tlieir explanation. Or, as man^s experience enlarges, new 
phenomena come within his horizon, which are so unique as 
to suggest the miraculous in comparison Avith anything to 
which he has hitherto become accustomed. Such exceptional 
phenomena, whether because of their power, their beauty, or 
their very strangeness, may suggest a special presence of the 
Divine, whether in spring or in grove, or even in wild beast. 
But not only the occasional occurrence of striking change in 
external things. Dreams and visions of the night represent 
changes which in every religion, from the Old Testament, or 
even the New, down to the lowest, have specially stirred the 
religious sense of the Divine. The dreams especially which 
afford direction and inspiration to the after-life, or those 
which suggest that that life is in the clutches of daemonic 
power, represent changes midway between the merely outward 
and the purely subjective, which have operated in stirring 
religious emotions and in giving a theological interpretation to 
the world. 

Finally, at a later stage there are inward changes of mood 
and disposition, which ^re made for man rather than by man, 
and therefore suggest external spiritual interference with his 
inner life as controlled by himself, similar to the effects 
produced by the meeting of a friend or of a foe. Sharp as 
the distinction between darkness and dawn are some of these 
transitions of inward feeling, accounted for in the present day 
by what is called "subliminal consciousness,^^ but suggesting 
to all ages the special intervention now of the divine, now of 
the diabolic. In all these cases with growing inwardness, the 
consciousness of change, referred to a volitional cause and 
affecting the inner life of man, is connected with a divine 
intention, springing out of either the momentary temper or 
the steadfast disposition of a personal agent. Such inter- 
vention is an actual experience of communication between the 
divine and the human. That communication may take place 
in order to befriend, or to injure, those who are the object of 
it. It may tend to their salvation as they understand it, or 
to their destruction. If the intervention be purely and always 
beneficent, it gives rise to the sense of fellowship. If it be 



162 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

threatening and possibly destnietive, it gives rise to the sense 
of antagonism and to the need of appeasement. If such 
manifestations, opposite though they seem, are unified as 
springing from the same source, then religious emotion and 
the theological scheme which accounts for it become complex. 
A religious cultus is set up, aiming at securing permanent 
relations of goodwill; including reconciliation in case of un- 
witting, or even willful, offense. Worship corresponds to the 
varying manifestations of divine temper in order to the 
establishment of a permanent peace, which may be broken 
occasionally, but which, with due safeguards, is never abso- 
lutely destroyed. Hence the constant repetition of helpful 
intervention, together with processes of special selection, which 
have general similarity but minor differences, lead to the 
recognition of tutelary deities, whether national or local, 
whether of special provinces and interests of human life or 
generally providential. 

With the establishment of tutelary relations comes the 
development of the rites of worship, with religious sacrifices 
and offerings. In the case of gods with whom constant and 
special relations of fellowship exist, these offerings are com- 
munion-offerings, the peace-offerings of the Old Testament. 
They represent among ruder nations a provision for the semi- 
physical needs of the Divine Being, who must actually be fed, 
if not on the grosser material of the food presented to him, 
at least on the sublimated substance of the fire and smoke 
and incense which ascend from it. If he does not need such 
nutriment, at least his rights are recognized by its being offered. 
Such offerings express on the part of the worshipers their trust 
and gratitude. They become the national or communal feasts 
which express the unity of the nation or city which offers them. 
They may even set forth under the forms of a sacramental feast 
that the bond of this unity consists in a common divine life, 
derived from the deity who is worshiped. Thus they celebrate 
the pact between the god and his worshipers, and express 
the fellowship both between him and them, and between the 
worshipers themselves on the ground of their common 
worship. 

On the other hand, where either the relations are 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 163 

prevailingly hostile, or where pacific relations are from time to 
time invaded by misdeed on the part of the worshiper, or, 
it may be, by unaccountable anger on the part of the divinity, 
rites and sacrifices of expiation become necessary. The 
appeasement of the Divine Being must take the form of the 
placation of his anger, of compensation for the material or 
moral injury done to him, or perhaps even of a bribe to 
secure for the future his favorable consideration. It is here 
that, according to the deepening of religion or the reverse, 
the great field of spiritual and moral development is found. 
Man's moral nature grows rather under the experienced wrath 
than under the experienced favor of God. It is as he feels 
that God is dissatisfied with him that he learns to be dis- 
satisfied with himself; although undoubtedly, if the full effect 
of this education is to take place, it is necessary that the 
displeasure should be seen to be the manifestation, not of an 
always wrathful and hostile God, but the occasional dis- 
pleasure of one with whom it is normally possible to be on 
terms of fellowship. When that is the case, according to 
the spiritual development of the people are the educative 
influences of their doctrine of propitiation. The felt dis- 
pleasure of the Divine Being may suggest a material injury 
done to Him, a mere ritual offence, a crime as He comes 
to be seen as ordering and protecting the humanities of life, 
the expression of insolence in temper, which is contrary to the 
humility becoming man in the presence of God, until it grows 
to the most inward and searching consciousness of sin which 
can be found in the penitential psalms or in the confessions 
of the saints. According to the degree of the depth and 
inwardness of this sense of sin is the crudeness or the 
spirituality of the doctrine of expiation, reaching up in its 
highest form to the New Testament doctrine of the Atone- 
ment. It is important to add that the sense of sin — its reality 
and dreadfulness — is proportioned to the elevation of the 
conception of God and to the depth of the religion. It is a 
fact that spiritual progress so deepens the sense of sin that 
isolated acts of wrong-doing are felt to proceed from an 
underlying condition of sinfulness, however this may be 
accounted for. 



164 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

With every stage of this practical religious development 
comes the need of two great representative persons, whose 
functions develop with the development of the religion, and 
whose spiritual worth is determined by the worth of religion. 
First of all the prophet; the man who is experienced in 
interpreting in the earlier stages the signs of the Divine Mind 
as manifest in outward phenomena or historical events; later, 
who is experienced in the interpretation of the Divine Mind, 
not merely from its external manifestations, but from the 
inward experiences of which he is the subject. Corresponding 
to his office of interpreting the Divine Mind is the prophet's 
function to evoke the right response to the divine in the 
human heart and in human conduct. Wherever is the re- 
ligion, there is the prophet ; as is the religion, so is the prophet, 
sinking to a mere medicine-man on the one hand, rising to an 
Isaiah on the other. 

Secondly, there is the priest; whether the father of the 
family, the head of the tribe, the king of the nation, or by- 
and-by specialized as a separate officer of the state, exclusively 
devoted to the service of God. He represents the community, 
and ultimately the individual, in presenting the offerings, 
whether sacramental or expiatory. He becomes the depositor}^ 
of the traditions which fix the ritual of all such ceremonies. 
Gradually, as representing the law which determines all special 
practice in the matter, he is not only the appointed representative 
of the nation before God, but is also the representative of God, 
embodying His claims upon the people. And again his position 
and his influence are in strict accord with the spiritual worth 
and rationality of the religion. 

Religion thus organized as the expression of stable re- 
lationships existing between the divinity and the community 
becomes the patron and the cement of social order. Of that 
order God is the vindicator. National life is based upon a 
religious communion of all the members of the community 
with the divinity and with one another. In consequence of 
this solidarity between the human and the divine, the 
integrity of all human relationships is guarded by religion. 
Hence in the development of the system of organized religion, 
man finds, in the first place, his safety from those physical or 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 165 

spiritual dangers which are threatened by divine hostility. 
He secures those benefits which are brought about by divine 
favor. Subsequently the religion thus developed gives 
stability to the social fabric, teaching all its members to 
recognize the authority of law as proceeding from a divine 
source and upheld by divine power. And lastly, as desires 
after the spiritual are developed, the higher satisfaction 
which we call blessedness is pursued in and through the 
practice of religion, which in its earlier stages sought more 
material ends. If this last work of spiritualizing religion is 
carried through to its completion, the whole becomes trans- 
formed. It is then conceived in higher and fuller forms with 
every advance in the range, depth, and worth of human 
consciousness. 

Such are the general facts presented to us by the study 
of the phenomena of historic religion as a whole. The 
whole man is involved in the whole process. The division 
into provinces of life called sacred and secular, or the attempt 
to distinguish in religion between what has been revealed by 
God and what has been discovered by man, comes only at a 
much later stage. Such distinctions arise with the growing 
complexity and manifoldness of human life. They are 
developed according to man's power of forming abstractions, 
first for the practical and then for the theoretical purposes of 
life. For example, such abstraction takes place for the 
purposes of practical life, when the business of religion is 
entrusted to a special officer expressly set apart for it, the 
priest. It is an ordinary primitive case of the division of 
labor, qualified, no doubt, as elsewhere, by the sense of a 
special aptitude or calling belonging to a particular man or 
a particular family. For the purposes of life the manifold- 
ness of its interests leads to a process of division, and hardens 
into beaten paths of thought and life. The perpetual travers- 
ing of such paths affects and hardens character, multiplying 
divided interests and divided aims in the internal as in the 
external life of men. As such interests become specialized, 
first of all externally, in institutions, then internally in the 
temperament of those who are attracted to^ and play their 
differing parts in, the various activities of the community. 



166 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

it becomes a task of ever-increasing difficulty thoroughly to 
reconcile the divisions thus set up. These were not present 
at the first, but became manifest and then hardened, first of 
all in the practical sphere, and afterwards in the theoretic, 
owing to the limitations of hirnian action and human 
character. At the end it becomes matter of the highest 
praise to say of any one what the late Dr. Hort said of Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge : "With him, as with every one to whom truth 
is more than a subject for speculation, there is no line of 
separation between the different subjects of his thoughts, still 
less between his thoughts and his life.'^ Only by such a process 
of reconciliation through love of the truth as a living and in- 
spiring whole does it become possible to return to the 
simplicity of the beginning, a simplicity which now holds 
together in thought and S3Tnpathy the many elaborated interests 
of life, which were one at first simply because they were 
undeveloped. 

Thus the practice of men in the work of life has led, first of 
all to a religion, then gradually, as thought has become reflective, 
to an abstract theology. The latter, in its earliest stages, contains 
truths, principles, and assumptions, from the fullness of which 
selection is made for the various interests of practical life. Every 
such practical principle at present applied to a purely secular 
end is a branch broken off from the tree of primitive religion, 
and contains within itself distinct testimony to its origin in that 
primitive interpretation of the world which we saw to be 
essentially theological. 

Meanwhile religion is embodied in concrete forms and 
institutions, which represent the actualized and formalized 
belief of society in the reality of a divine communion. This 
organized religion tends in the many to become a mere 
formal observance. On the part of the more earnest it tends to 
awaken, to deepen, and to shape religious sentiment; while in 
the case of the more abstract-minded few it tends to produce 
a formal theology. But it is never entirely without theology. 
Eeligious observances and feeling always have some thought 
of the nature of their object present to them, just as religious 
sentiment and religious thought are never entirely separated 
from practice. Thus the unity of religious observance. 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 167 

religious sentiment, and theology forms a living whole, repre- 
senting the total personal reaction of men upon the whole of the 
world as it is presented to and apprehended by their conscious- 
ness, awakened into this full activity in pursuit of the aims of 
life. The range, the depth, the worth of religion are determined 
in the first place by the completeness of the impression made, 
and secondly by the sincerity, the vigor, and thoroughness of the 
reaction. 

The religious result attained by any particular race is 
affected by its special peculiarities, by its natural experience 
in the world, as well as by the events and stages of its historic 
progress or downfall. Taking the races of mankind as we find 
them, there are, firstly, certain common elements underlying all 
religions; secondly, peculiar variations, which have been de- 
veloped and stereotyped by national specialization, and by 
special historic experience. Thirdly, there are also manifest the 
influences of approximation, of what is called syncretism, 
brought about by contact, whether through commerce, or con- 
quest, or the wider intercourse of human life. These have led to 
the adoption of foreign faiths, and to the modification of 
domestic religion. 

In particular, the result has many factors affecting its 
final form in addition to all the principaL elements 
which have been considered at the outset of our inquiry. 
(1) In the first place, there are intellectual factors. The 
theological interpretation of the universe naturally corresponds 
to the state of the mental faculties of those who interpret it. 
With some the universe is not unified under any philosophical 
or scientific principles. It represents, therefore, a chaos, with 
some attempts at the regulation of contending elements and 
phenomena. So long as the mind can tolerate the world as 
so conceived, it naturally creates and maintains a polytheism 
in its worship. The manifoldness and distinctness of the 
phenomena of the world as personalized are reflected in 
the religion. It sees a separate Deity in or behind all these 
separate, cooperating, or clashing elements of reality. The 
system which tolerates or creates pol3^theism may, however, 
be modified by the disposition to recognize the unity of the 
world for the purpose of any particular interest of life. 



168 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

Only gradually when men come to grasp the whole of the world 
as composing one system are they able to bring together its parts 
and to reconcile its oppositions as being mere aspects or subordi- 
nate agencies in the larger whole, and therefore subject to one 
sovereign will. 

(2) Again, the result depends upon moral factors. Its 
details are differently conceived according to differences of 
social organization, and therefore of the moral standpoint 
implied in them. At every stage the moral ideal colors the 
theological conception. According to the predominance of 
moral interests does it become possible to conceive of a God 
who has consistent moral purpose and character. According 
as moral interests become supreme in men does it become 
possible for them to conceive of these moral interests as being 
supreme in the universe. It seems to them impossible that the 
will is governed by mere brute-necessity. And, further, accord- 
ing to the ideal nature of the morality so adopted and held, 
becomes the nature of the moral purpose entertained and en- 
forced by the Deity throughout the whole of His government of 
the world. 

(3) In the third place, the secular experience of the race has 
important consequences for the shaping of its religion. Natural 
environment, encouraging energy, satisfying hope, linking re- 
ligious zeal to a sense of mastery in action and of understanding 
in thought, helps a genial and progressive theology. On the 
other hand, where the environment is the reverse, depressing 
and distracting the life of men with the sense that the universe 
is man's enemy, the effect becomes clearly marked upon 
theology, and still more clearly so as the environment progress- 
ively deteriorates the race. This downward tendency is 
accentuated when to the hostility of nature are added the 
catastrophes of history. 

(4) Above all, there are mysteriously varying springs in 
human nature, reaching from the mundane, though worthy, 
moralism of Confucius, so characteristic an expression of 
that which is best in the Chinese race, to the soaring aspirations 
of those whom we treat as the typical representatives of 
saintliness, whether in the Old Testament or in Christian 
times. And even where the sense of the Infinite is developed 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 169 

it seems sometimes to be almost accidental whether that sense 
shall tend towards Pantheism, which finds the One and the All 
in nature conceived as a whole, or whether it shall recoil from 
the whole of life as thus presented to seek its infinite satisfaction 
elsewhere. Thus the tendency of the whole of Aryan religion, 
including, of course, the religion of Greece, is to embody the 
divine in the finite, whereas the tendency of Hebrew religion is 
to accentuate the distinction between the two. 

Even in the case of advancement of religious thought and 
life it by no means follows that human nature should advance 
in all directions, equally or in harmony. Throughout, the 
spiritual and moral factors — the most mysterious and in- 
explicable of all — count for more than the purely intellectual, 
or than the influences of mere physical environment. Con- 
science has done more for the unification of theology than 
philosophy, although it has invoked the aid of philosophy 
before it has finished its work. And while advance may 
take place in very varying degrees along different lines, in 
some nations the mundane interests, which gradually become 
specialized apart from religion, may come altogether to pre- 
dominate, throwing religion into the background, or even 
actively opposing the considerations which it brings to bear. 
Thus religion may be starved by what is called worldliness, 
or opposed outright in the interests of worldly progress; 
though sometimes this takes place as a revolt on behalf of 
moral and intellectual interests against a religion which has 
failed to keep pace with general progress, and has sunk to be a 
mere superstition. 

Again, there may be moods and phases of such antagonism 
to religion, growing out of more or less temporary influences 
upon the spiritual life of nations as of individuals. All these 
causes, and more, operate to produce that diversity which 
marks historical religions, although each religion embodies 
in its own way the representation by a particular race of 
supreme purpose and personality, in the singular or the plural, 
controlling the life of man, becoming the object of faith or 
fear, and offering a satisfaction of those spiritual needs which 
are not met by the ordinary intercourse and activities of 
finite life. 



170 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Upon all these influences it depends how man conceives the 
God he needs, and with whom he realizes communion. In the 
same way, it depends upon his general spiritual development 
where he places his divinity. For example, it is only when self- 
consciousness is fully developed (under divine influence, it will 
be subsequently contended, and in such-wise that full self- 
consciousness involves the consciousness of God), and when the 
world in its materiality is at last seen as the antithesis of that 
self-consciousness, that man comes to say in any full sense of 
the term, ''God is Spirit." 

It must always have more or less serious consequences for 
religion and life if a man confuses the finite and the infinite, 
the divine with any particular phenomenon of the natural 
world; for example, when the sun is identified with God. 
Yet it is none the less true that any phenomenon of nature 
may be invested by the mind of the worshiper with practi- 
cally infinite attributes for the needs of religion, and may 
preserve these attributes until either the growth of science 
dispossesses it, or the development of the spiritual life out- 
grows it. So with the confusion of idolatry. The idol is 
never a merely material object of worship, although un- 
doubtedly, owing to the superficial and degraded temper of 
many of its worshipers, it may approach indefinitely towards 
becoming such. It is created in the first place as the best 
representation which its worshipers can fashion of some 
being, or of some aspect of life, which it symbolizes. As the 
work of the imagination of its fashioner, it seems to him not 
merely a symbol of the divine, but its very abode and the 
means of its manifestation. But behind or within the idol 
the worshiper realizes the spiritual attributes with which 
his fancy has endowed it; and it is with the spiritual being 
which is conceived that his religion has to deal, at least in 
those more thoughtful moments when his own spiritual life 
is active. 

Thus the most important matter is always, not where man 
places the divine object of his worship, but how he conceives 
it, and, in a sense, what he brings to it. By this ultimately 
the nature, course, and interpretation of the religion will be 
shaped. In this inner consciousness and representation as 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 171 

finally developed will lie whatever revelation of God is present; 
found alike in the search after Him and in the response to 
Him. Both in the case of particular men and of particular 
races the upward or downward course of a religion will be 
determined by the vigor or the decay of spiritual intuition, 
and by the moral consciousness. Thus it is conceivable that 
there might be in different instances the same halting-places 
at which different religions might meet, some on an upward 
and some on a downward course. In some cases particular 
phenomena of religious life may be a starting-point for advance, 
in others a stage on the road of steady decline. Whether they 
are the one or the other will depend, as has been said, on 
the conditions, vigorous or otherwise, of the spiritual 
consciousness. 

No attempt is here being made to supply a history of 
the evolution of religion. It may be doubted whether the 
time is yet ripe for this, or whether the course of it approaches 
uniformity in different races. But without making any 
such attempt, what has been said, if there be truth in it, may 
enable us to dispose of several theories of the development of 
religion which have been widely held in recent times. In the 
first place, it is contended by many that all religion has been 
developed from original animism, the worship primarily of 
ghosts, extending gradually to the worship of the spirit present 
in natural phenomena, conceived after the analogy of ghosts, 
and rising eventually to the conception of supreme gods, who 
have been evolved from the ghosts of super-eminent ancestors, 
or from the spirits of exceptionally impressive natural pheno- 
mena. There is much evidence, however, from savage religions 
in all lands that this is not the case — that ghost-worship has 
superseded an earlier and higher religion as men have become 
superficial, materialist, panic-stricken, and degraded. Much 
interesting evidence on this subject has been collected by 
Mr. Andrew Lang in his works, and by others. Similar 
testimony is given by Mr. Eobert HamiU Nassau, who 
was for forty years a missionary in West Africa. "Where did 
you get the name of God?" asked the missionary of a native. 
"Our forefathers told us that name. Njambi is the one 
who made us. He is our father. He made these trees, that 



172 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

mountain, this river, and these goats and chickens, and us 
people." "Why, then, do you not obey this father's commands, 
who tells you to do so and so? Why do you not worship 
him?" Promptly they replied: "Yes, he made us; but 
having made us, he abandoned us, does not care for us; he is 
far from us. Why should we care for him? He does not 
help nor harm us. It is the spirits, who can harm us, whom 
we fear and worship, and for whom we care."^ A remarkable 
story of the passing away of the deeper and more spiritual ele- 
ments in religion before the immediate pressure of more urgent 
religious concerns, created by the growth of that spirit of 
superstitious fear which is the first mark of spiritual and moral 
degeneration. 

Secondly, it has been contended that Polytheism is the first 
step towards Monotheism. Man first, with a wealth of imagi- 
nation, peopled the whole world with divinities; and only 
gradually, in the course of scientific enlightenment, reduced 
them to one, helped by the superior influence on his life, 
perhaps, of the sun, or by the discovery that the universe 
constitutes a complete and inter-related system, and, therefore, 
must spring from one source. It is probable that when the 
stage of Polytheism has been reached men may be helped by 
such considerations to the goal of Monotheism. But it by no 
means follows that the goal which man finally reaches was 
not his starting-point before Polytheism was developed; for 
the worship of many gods involves a specialization. In 
its more elaborate forms there is the distinct marking out of 
provinces, whether of natural phenomena or of human experi- 
ence, between this god and that god. This delimitation 
of frontiers involves a step onward, either from a previous chaos, 
or, at least, from the vague and undefined. It is, therefore, at 
least, equally possible that Polytheism proceeds by way of 
determinations from a previous vague apprehension of the, 
Divine as One. All the evidence goes to show the probability 
of this view. The tribe, in its early life, has a selected god, 
perhaps a totem. That selected god is invested with all the 
attributes, rights, and functions, so far as they are at that 
stage conceived, of supreme godhead for that particular race. 

1 Fetichism in West Africa. 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 173 

Subsequent events tend rather to enlarge than to narrow its 
Pantheon. 

Further, it becomes evident how a fusion may take place 
between the older religion and the newer practice of ancestor- 
worship, and how religion may oscillate between the worship 
of a Supreme Being, perhaps now identified with the sun or 
the heavens, and that of a divine ancestor. God may be con- 
ceived as the Divine Father and Creator, as in the West 
African case just quoted. The first Ancestor is, therefore, the 
first of His sons. This relationship may lead to the bringing 
down of God into the realm of human life by a conception of 
Him as the first Father of the race, or the ancestor may be 
elevated to the heavens, and may be confused with the 
Heavenly Father there. Or, as in the case of the Greeks, 
the original relationship between Zeus and the race-ancestor 
may be preserved by the myth which tells the story of the 
hero's birth. 

The course of religion in its development everywhere has 
been influenced by great religious personalities, a few of them 
being in the highest degree creative. In this respect, as in so 
many others, religion resembles other great interests of human 
life. But there is this difference, that whereas in some depart- 
ments of life genius has a peculiar form of self-confidence and 
self-assertion, in religion eminence is marked preeminently 
by a higher degree of sensitiveness and receptivity towards 
influences felt to be above and beyond the immediate personal 
life of those who are affected by them. In the case of religious 
leaders, therefore, inspiration is the source of their spiritual 
power, revelation the way in which the truth which they 
proclaim comes to be received and held by them. But 
while they receive that which they set forth by means of a 
peculiar sensitiveness to the supposed divine source of revelation, 
their natural mark is that they take the religion of their time 
in earnest, working out and applying in a more thorough 
way than others its faith, its assumptions, and its eon- 
sequences. It may be that they develop in a deeper and 
more consistent form what has been held before them; or it 
may be that the earnestness with which they test the religion 
of their time reveals to them its insufficiency, and produces in 



174 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

them a reactioiij more or less far-reaching, from it, either in the 
realm of thought, which gathers up its underlying principles 
and truths, or in the realm of practice. Of course, however 
original such great religious creators may be, and however 
close they may stand to the spiritual source of their inspiration, 
they are conditioned by their starting-point, by the characteris- 
tics of the race and the time to which they belong, by 
environment, and, to a great extent, by the life-experience 
through which they pass. Even in the case of revelation, how- 
ever direct and supernatural it may be, there are limits to the 
possibility of a new beginning. To transgress these limits would 
be to transgress all the principles of that ordered progress of 
human life which indicates a supreme divine method, not to be 
violated at any point. Indeed, to violate it would be to produce 
such discontinuity that the supposed product of revelation would 
become unintelligible. 

Thus the prophets of humanity, while they transcend their 
times and their fellows in the purity of their insight, the 
fullness of their devotion, and the completeness of their pro- 
clamation of that which they receive, are in the closest 
solidarity with their race and their times. This solidarity may 
lead, as has been pointed out, to a further development, to a 
reaction, or to a step forward, in which reaction seeks a fuller 
development of the principles implicitly contained in the re- 
ligion. All these conditions are illustrated in the case of the 
two supreme religious Personalities of the world, Christ and 
Buddha, omitting for the moment the world of distinction 
which separates the one from the other. Neither can be 
understood apart from the conditions in which he arose. Each 
offers a religious solution of the problem of life, which, while 
representing a reaction from the current religion, gives fuller 
and completer expression to the underlying principles of that 
religion. This is obvious in the case of Christ. But in the 
case of Buddha, the fact that his doctrine of Nirvana rids men 
from the interminable distress of transmigration, and from 
the burden of an oppressive evil, is only due to the more 
thorough though sympathetic way in which Buddha reaches 
the ideal of religion, as understood by the men of his race and 
his time, namely, the triumphant escape from that world of 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 175 

conscious personality and effort in which lies all human 
misery. The point of distinction in the case of Buddha is 
not so much that his remedy differs from that of his time, as 
that he makes it more accessible to the multitude instead of 
limiting it to the few. In order, therefore, to apprehend the 
superiority of Christianity to Buddhism, it is necessary to 
take full account, not merely of the higher worth and the 
directer revelation in the case of the Founder of Christianity, 
hut also to do justice to the higher worth of all that had gone 
before in the spiritual history of Israel as compared with that 
of other races. 

In the evolution of religion, there is room, not merely for the 
work of the prophet, but for that of the critic. The great 
forward movements led by the spiritual prophets of mankind 
are also served by the criticism of those whose spirits are 
keener to detect the insufficiency of the present than to discover 
the remedy for it. Such men help to destroy solidarity and 
satisfaction with present thought and practice. Their in- 
fluence goes to loosen the burden of it, and to make room for 
a higher revelation and a higher standard of conduct to 
take its place. 

Eeligion, as a whole, must be tested in its most perfect 
form; that is to say, we must endeavor to ascertain where 
religion has reached the highest end of its development. 
There, and there only, can its meaning be rightly judged, 
and the efficient cause of its existence and development be 
discovered. Even in that case, however, the perfect religion 
must be seen and judged in relation to and in the light of 
imperfect religions, whether they are in direct relation with it 
or not. Aristotle has well laid down in the Politics, that 
in all cases of development, the product must be judged by 
what it is when complete, and not by its incomplete begin- 
nings. It is therefore a most serious mistake to attempt to 
discover the meaning of religion by describing its incom- 
pletest and most degraded forms, by endeavoring to discover 
certain elements which are common to all religions, or by 
attempting to find out what it was in its beginnings. All 
such inquiries may have a relative importance at a later 
stage; but just as in the world of nature life is understood. 



176 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

not b}^ the study of those obscure forms of it which ap- 
proach most nearly to the non-living, but by means of its 
highly developed types, just as the same method is applied to 
the understanding of the political institutions which have 
been created by men, so must it be in the case of religion. 
Eeligion resembles a tree; and in treating it as such we must 
remember that its trunk is to be found not in religion itself, 
but in human nature as a whole, out of the essential nature 
of which religion grows. To separate religion from man, and 
to treat it as the tree itself, is to start with an abstraction, 
and not with a reality. Eeligion, as manifested, is the 
response which human nature itself, as placed in the universe, 
makes to the whole by which it is surrounded, so far as that 
whole is apprehended by it. That whole, if its testimony be 
true, consists of God and of the forces controlled by Him 
which condition the life of man. The perfect religion can 
only emerge by means of revelation as the expression of a 
perfectly developed and balanced spiritual consciousness in 
entirely healthy action and reaction upon the whole world. 
This is not to say that such a perfect religion need come last 
in order of time, in the history of human progress. The out- 
come of religion is determined by the selecting conditions 
which govern its start and its progress. These selecting 
conditions are as special in the case of religion as they are in 
the case of any other contribution to other great interests of 
human life. The form of all religion is revelation — the un- 
folding of the Divine to an intuitive faculty — followed by the 
response of trust in, and submission to, what has been 
revealed, so that — according to the measure of its worth and 
fullness — illumination, insight, inspiration, and power proceed 
from it. The perfect religion, therefore, will represent a unique 
perfection of revelation acting upon a specially sensitive medium, 
specially conditioned by its environment, and educated by its 
contact with the world. 

Eeligion, therefore, judged in its most perfect form, must 
be tested (1) by its containing a complete expression of all 
the factors by which, as has been seen in the opening 
examination, it is constituted; (2) hence, by its superior 
power to meet all the demands which developed consciousness 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 177 

and advanced knowledge can apply to it. These tests are 
fourfold. Firstly, tests applied by reason in the light of 
knowledge and reflection. Secondly, tests applied by an elevated 
moral standard, reached as the race advances towards maturity. 
Thirdly, tests similarly applied by the spiritual needs of the 
race, seeking inward liberation from sin, reconciliation with 
the whole of life, power for its tasks, and satisfaction under 
its conditions. Fourthly, tests applied by the practical needs 
of human life in an advancing world. Such are the pre- 
liminary tests to be applied to religions before we reach 
the final question of their absolute or relative truth, as 
unfolding the inmost reality and the ultimate meaning of 
the universe. 

Eegarding religions from the standpoint of life, before 
the relationship of life to truth is considered, they must 
be tested by their power to act as factors in the normal and 
final development of human nature, by their power to exist 
side by side with, to appropriate and inspire all progress, 
by their realizing man as called to live alike in the world 
and above it. Especially they must be tested by their 
power to become catholic; that is, to become central and 
complete for man when he reaches maturity, by a normal 
and complete development. The perfect religion must be in 
harmony, not with the narrow experience of a part, but with 
the world as a whole, and must be adequate to the life-task 
and the social relationships of the most advanced human 
society. From this point of view, and assuming human nature 
as it has been manifested in human history, we may perhaps 
lay down the following detailed tests by which religions must 
be tried, in order that their relative fitness to survive may be 
determined on the ground of serviceableness to the well- 
being of humanity. 

1. In the first place, in a progressive world, religions 
must not exclusively consecrate the past. "Life,^' to quote 
Mr. J. E. Illingworth (Christian Character, p. 107), "has, we 
have seen, development. Expansion, realization, is that 
which all its instincts demand.^^ It is quite true that such 
development or expansion is at particular times limited to 
particular cases. For example, up to the present time we 



178 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

have been accustomed to speak of the West as being pro- 
gressive, and of the East as stationary. How precarious 
statements of that kind really are, is shown by the recent 
transformation of Japan, with all that is conceivably bound 
up with that transformation. But whether progress be 
universally possible or not, the future of the world lies 
with the progressive races, and every race, however stationary at 
the present time, must, at some period or other of its history, 
have been itself progressive. Hence, while a religion which 
exclusively consecrates the past may suit the temporary 
needs of a stationary or retrogressive race, it cannot be 
true to the needs of the world as a whole, nor can the attitude 
which it enjoins be brought into harmony with its own 



2. Secondly, in a world which educates and disciplines 
men, in so far as they treat it as real and as important, 
religions must not negate the world as being unreal, or 
disparage it as being unimportant. The whole history of 
mankind shows how human powers have been developed in 
unceasing interaction with the world around. Man can only 
become real as he frankly and fully concedes reality to 
the world. He is obliged to do so for all the minor purposes 
of his life. To reverse this at any arbitrarily selected point is 
to introduce a contradiction alike into the inner and into 
the outer world. To assume the unreality of the whole 
is to take up an attitude of inner distrust, which expressly 
denies without evidence the veracity of the whole basis 
of life. 

3. Eeligions must not set up a recognized dualism in 
life, whether that dualism be objective or subjective. An ob- 
jective dualism pronounces certain phenomena of the world 
intrinsically good, and certain others intrinsically bad, and, 
according to their nature, traces them back to a good or evil 
origin. A subjective dualism bases the distinction between 
good and bad in outward things upon their supposed influence 
upon spiritual interests. But whether the dualism be natural 
or spiritual, it, in either case, transgresses that experience of 
the world which forces us to realize that it is one inter- 
related system throughout. ^ATiatever may be the explanation 



THE FACTORS OF RELIGION 179 

of its different aspects or of particular phenomena, its unity as 
an organic whole must be the starting-point of thought and life. 
Perfect character, therefore, can only be built up by means of 
ordered relationship to the whole, and not by attempted 
exclusion of any part. 

4. For the same roason, namely, that the world is one organic 
system, religions must not rest satisfied with conflicting and 
incoherent elements or aspects. The world being a cosmos, 
religion must not be a chaos. 

5. Religions must not personify the merely natural, and ele- 
vate it in its otherness and finitude to supremacy. To do so is 
to misread nature, and to do injury to the spiritual heirship 
of man. 

6. Eeligions must not make light of personality, or show 
hostility to full conscious existence in a world which is being 
created by the expression of personality in the belief that con- 
scious existence is good. It has been by the development of 
selves that the world has been made. It is a suicidal principle 
to suppose that the goal of a world which has been made by the 
creation of selves should consist in the extinction of selves, 
either in the outward form of annihilation or in the inward form 
of the suppression of those motives upon which personal 
existence depends. 

7. Eeligions must not treat the Divine as merely external to 
the world, and manifest in it only as will and cause. The Divine, 
however it may be defined, cannot be separated from a world 
which bears upon the face of it the marks of immanent depend- 
ence upon its source, and of organic evolution from within. To 
represent the Divine as merely external to it is, therefore, to 
press the consciousness of will in man to theological conse- 
quences which both exaggerate the separation of man as will 
from nature, and contradict any true philosophy of the evolution 
of the world. 

8. Finally, religions must not minimize evil, or, what is 
the same thing, maximize it, by tolerating it or assuming it. 
Evil, especially spiritual and moral evjl, is that which ought 
not to be, and therefore exists to be got rid of. In short, this 
might be taken as a definition of what evil is. In religion, 
to legitimize evil, therefore, is to betray human nature and to 



180 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

abdicate its functions. Redemptive power must, therefore, be the 
final test of religion. 

Our account of the elements which enter into fully developed 
religion, of the influences which modify it, and of the conditions 
which a religion must fulfill in order to be permanent and to 
become universal, is now complete. We must pass on to review 
existing religions in its light. 



CHAPTER HI 

TEE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 

THE next step is briefly to review, in the light of the 
priQciples which have been laid down, the leading 
types of ethnic religion, as they have become mani- 
fest in history. It is not necessary for this purpose very care- 
fully to consider the question of classification^ or to enter into 
minute details which are beyond the scope of the present inquiry, 
and for which space is not available. It is possible to classify 
religions upon several distinct principles, but for our purpose 
a simple enumeration of types will be sufficient. Excluding for 
the present the religion of the Old and New Testament, the re- 
ligions of the world may be considered under the following 
heads: firstly, Nature-worships; secondly. Ancestor-worship 
and Animism in various forms; thirdly. Humanism, as seen 
particularly in the Homeric religion; fourthly, Moralism, as 
exemplified by the system of Confucius ; fifthly, the more or less 
philosophical reactions from all these, as, for example, certain 
elements in the religion of the Greeks, Brahmanism, and 
Buddhism; sixthly, Dualism; seventhly, Abstract Monotheism, 
as represented by Mohammedanism. 

It must be understood that these types do not always 
exist in isolation. It is easy to find religions which in 
different moods, for different wants, or by different accretions, 
pass from one division to another, or combine several. 
Actual religions may often be found in which naturalist and 
animist elements of many grades of development are com- 
biued. The moralism of Confucius frankly accepted the 
ancestor-worship of the Chinese, and such elements of 
nature-worship as were present in the current religion. The 

181 



182 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

humanism of the Greeks was also held in combination with 
animist and naturalist features, which were never suppressed. 
The philosophical reactions from popular religion, whether in 
the East or in the "West, have never become entirely independent 
of these popular elements. They have tolerated them as a re- 
ligion for the common people, and as a system to be recognized 
even by the select few in the preliminary stages of religious 
development. 

Dualism, again, exemplified by Zoroastrian religion, while 
on a much higher level than ordinary nature-worship, is not 
incompatible with a very marked presence of naturalistic 
features, as, to take only one example, in the respect which 
is shown for the elements of the earth, air, fire, water, and 
for the principle of life itself. Nor is a similar admixture 
totally absent from the abstract monotheism of Mohammed, 
although the mission of Mohammed himself was a warfare 
against idolatrous and superstitious observances among the 
Arabs. All of these types of religion show clearly the marks 
of man's effort to give expression to his sense of a controlling 
purpose above him, ordering his life; to his sense of depend- 
ence, and to his consciousness of the need of fellowship with 
the Divine. In varying degrees all exhibit an endeavor to 
place the moral life, as understood, under a religious sanction. 
All again, in different ways, and in larger or smaller measure, 
attempt to give expression to the sense of infinity in man's 
life. 

The first four of these types — Nature-worship, Ancestor- 
worship, Humanism, and Moralism — make little or no attempt 
to answer the question as to the origin of the universe. 
Speaking broadly, the question of origins does not arise for 
them. The world is given as the starting-point. Their 
theological doctrine, therefore, has to do with controlling 
influences in the world as it exists, not with any question 
of a First Cause, by which it is brought into being. Not 
one of all these religions, including even Mohammedanism, 
presents a view of the Divine Being as at once transcending, 
constituting, and unifying the whole of nature and man. It 
is impossible, within our limits, to examine in detail the 
doctrines of these religions even on such important subjects 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 183 

as those concerning sin and redemption. Nor is it necessary for 
the present purpose. They may be sufficiently judged by their 
representation of the divine object of religion, and by their 
religious spirit, whether as a response to that object or as an 
attitude towards the world and life. 

I. Xature-worships, with which our inquiry must begin, are 
represented in their best-known forms, by the religion of the 
Vedas, by the popular Greek religion, though in that case with 
the naturalist elements receding, by the Scandinavian myths, 
and by other forms of early Aryan religion. To this type of 
religion belongs so widespread a worship as that of the heavenly 
bodies. The question arises whether these religions can in any 
way be regarded as primitive. The answer is at once given in 
the negative by those who regard Ancestor-worship or Animism 
as the starting-point of all religions. According to that view, 
all forms of nature-worship, whether of the heavenly bodies or 
of natural phenomena, are a comparatively late development 
from the primitive ghost-worship. For reasons which will be 
given subsequently, it seems impossible to regard this as in any 
way a satisfactory answer. 

On the other hand, there is much evidence, such as that to 
which reference has already been made,^ of a primitive belief, 
very widely held, although subsequently superseded, in a 
creative All-Father or Supreme Being. The way in which 
the Supreme Being was presented to the minds of those who 
recognized Him, and the causes which gave rise to that 
recognition, must remain obscure. This is the case, partly 
because the worship is practically superseded, partly because 
of the difficulty which uncivilized races find in giving clear 
expression to their conceptions on such matters, and partly 
owing to the risk that under cross-examination by those who 
have reached the standpoint of developed Theism, more may 
be read into the minds of uncivilized men than can accurately 
be attributed to them. But when all such allowance has been 
made, there is distinct evidence pointing in the direction of a 
primitive sense of a Divine Father, who is the Creator 
certainly of the human race, and perhaps also of the world. 
Subsequently, He is identified with natural phenomena, above 

» See p. 171. 



184 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

all, with the heavens or with the sun, as growing prominence 
is given to the influence of these natural phenomena upon 
human life. This prominence marks a somewhat advanced 
stage of human consciousness. There is for the time 
an eclipse of the more directly spiritual elements in early 
religion. In particular, as has been seen, the question of 
origins recedes into the background, and religion is concerned 
not with cosmogony, but with the dominant influences upon 
human life, which have to be recognized and either sought after 
or averted. 

Another form of nature-worship is to be found in Totemism, 
so widely prevalent in primitive times. Survivals may easily 
be met with, while the worship of the sacred beasts in Egypt 
is thought by many to represent an elaborate development 
from this origin. In such cases there is a combination of 
tribal organization with the selection by each tribe of some 
particular animal as a symbol and embodiment of the Divine 
Being. The animal under such circumstances is not seen as 
a mere natural member of a zoological order, but as the special 
embodiment of that controlling divine presence and pro- 
vidence upon which life is felt to be dependent. When the 
imaginative elements in such a worship are duly recognized, 
Totemism may perhaps seem to be in some respects a more 
spiritual worship than that of the heavenly bodies. And this, 
not only because life, even animal life, takes higher rank than 
merely material phenomena, but, above all, because in the 
selection and maintenance of such an object of worship, with 
the sacramental and other observances connected with it, 
there is a higher manifestation of the spiritual elements which 
go to determine the meaning and the worth of religion than is 
found in the mere acceptance as divine of physical elements 
or phenomena because of their vastness and of their manifest 
influence upon human existence. When the animal becomes 
divine there is, perhaps, a higher exercise of the qualities of 
spiritual imagination with its mysticism than is the case with 
ordinary nature-worship, though the breadth and tenderness of 
poetic feeling are greater in the latter. 

Totemism in general corresponds to a particular stage in 
tribal organization, and flourishes before that wider view of 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 185 

the world has been brought about which leads to more 
extended naturalism in religion or to an articulated Poly- 
theism. The selection of the particular animal-god, with 
which the tribe is in special and sacramental relation, may 
be, in the first instance, due to an accident; but it possibly 
derives its permanence from the admiration originally felt 
for certain qualities manifest in particular animals, as, for 
instance, swiftness, strength, fearlessness, though the relation- 
ship is subsequently preserved by mere custom. Community 
is recognized between such qualities in animal and in man. 
There is a belief in a larger measure of community than 
really exists between man and the animal creation, due both 
to the exaggerated belief in the personality of the animals 
and to a lack of developed personality in man. It is out of 
such a state of mind that the legends of mixed beings, partly 
man and partly animal, and of talking animals, have sprung. 
It is easy to see how from this stage of worship development 
is possible either upwards towards a more adequate spirituality 
in religion, or downward towards a more purely naturalist 
worship. On the one hand, it is conceivable that the spiritual 
should throw oft its inadequate embodiment and be developed 
in the direction of pure Theism. Or, on the other hand, the 
naturalist elements may become predominant with less and 
less exercise of spiritual imagination in the case of decaying 
tribes, or, in the case of progressive tribes, may become a stage 
towards that ordinary naturalism which embodies the 
presence of deity in the vaster and more impressive physical 
phenomena. 

Behind Totemism, and akin to its fundamental idea, was the 
presence of the tendency to localize the presence of the Divine 
Being, which is illustrated in the case of sacred stones, 
whether natural or prepared by human hands. Apparently, 
this tendency points to a stage of religious consciousness far 
anterior to that in which the Divine is distinctly personalized 
in Polytheism, distinct functions being given to each parti- 
cular divinity, and attempts being made to set forth the distinct 
individuality of each by means of a characteristic image or 
idol. The Divine is vaguely felt as encompassing the life 
of the worshiper and controlling it. For the purposes of 



186 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

worship it is localized in the particular natural object which 
attracts the attention of the worshiper. This object or 
monument is the home of the god, the chosen place or 
means of his manifestation. It must not be confused with the 
divinity itself. Gradually, however, the Divine, which was 
originally seen simply to have its dwelling-place and the 
means of its manifestation in the selected object, tends to 
become confused with that object. Yet, however lowly and 
primitive such manifestations of the religious spirit may be, 
two facts are clear about them. In the first place, 
the conception of the god who inhabits, or who is confused 
with either the inanimate monument, the tree, or the animal, 
may represent a practical monotheism, only to be refused the 
name of monotheism because the distinct alternative between 
one god and many has never been presented to the primitive 
mind or determined by it. Further, the deity so conceived 
may be endowed with the highest qualities that the mind of 
its worshiper is at that stage able to conceive. In the next 
place, such primitive worship bears exactly the same marks 
as the subsequently developed naturalism, which finds its 
divinities in the sun, moon, and stars, or other natural objects. 
The only difference is that in this humble stage of its 
development the human mind is attracted by comparatively 
trifling objects, and has neither the range nor power, by 
which selection is eventually made of the vastest or most 
influential natural phenomena as being the most adequate 
representation of the Divine. In all these types, stages, or 
manifestations of naturalism, the essential principles are 
identical. 

It is hardly necessary to sum up the reasons why such 
a religion fails to satisfy the spiritual needs of men as their 
consciousness becomes more highly developed. Nature- 
worship, whether in its more primitive or in its more 
advanced forms, represents either an undue localization of 
the Divine in particular objects, or a naive personiflcation of 
the Divine in nature, which is untrue to fact. No doubt the 
beauty or impressive grandeur of nature speaks to the heart 
of primitive man with a mystic influence which lives still 
in the highest poetry. In its early stages, the human spirit 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 187 

realizes community with nature rather than distinction from 
her. In communing with the phenomena of dawn and sun- 
set, of storm and of calm, men felt a kindred influence within, 
so that these natural phenomena came to symbolize spiritual 
conditions, and spiritual conditions were used to interpret 
natural phenomena. The truth contained in such impressions 
must not be forgotten or disparaged. Out of this underlying 
sense of the unity of man with nature spring the myths and 
legends of bygone religion, which are instinct with poetry, and 
represent both the dawning observation of nature and the 
glimmerings of spiritual truth. Yet it is impossible, upon the 
basis of naturalism, to do any justice to the meaning of human 
personality or to the higher terms and interests in human life 
itself. Nature-worship must, at the best, be unmoral, and when 
it has survived as a lingering presence amid higher subsequent 
worships, it has always sunk until it has become immoral. It 
has been attracted to and held fast by the mystery of the 
processes and phenomena of purely physical life, and has 
never been able to rise to a higher point of view. In its 
latest forms of developed polytheism the very division of 
different elements in natural life, and different qualities in 
human character and temper among different divinities, has 
made it impossible completely to subordinate such aspects 
as in nature are unmoral and such qualities as in man are 
immoral to one supreme spiritual and ethical purpose. 
Hence the worshiper at one moment offers his service 
at the shrine of a diviuity, who represents some moral 
quality or beneficent office conceived as worthily as at that 
stage is possible. At another time, and under different conditions, 
he proceeds to pay equally sincere worship to diviuities represent- 
ing agencies which, taken as separate from the whole texture of 
natural life, appear malevolent ; or qualities and modes of action 
in human life which are actively and even disgracefully immoral 
and criminal. On the basis of naturalism, therefore, whether 
in its higher or its lower forms, no development of the moral life 
is possible. 

The practices of naturalism are in many cases supplemented 
by those iufluences of orgiastic religion which stimulate 
unnatural and even frenzied exaltation in the worshipers. 



188 THE CHRISTIAI^ RELIGION 

Such practices characterized the worship of the Great Mother 
in Phrygia^ the Bacchic rites in Greece, and similar practices 
in Eome. This exaltation is often assisted by actual intoxica- 
tion. The god of the spiritual exaltation is also the god of 
wine. There is a combination of lofty with repulsive and 
bestial features. The human spirit manifests a delirious 
desire for communion with the Infinite, but is not raised either 
by its theology or by its religious spirit to the ethical temper 
which alone can find the true Infinite in a holy God. Living 
on the level of pure nature-worship, its chief sense of the 
divine is found in the natural bounty of which the fruit of 
the vine seems the most generous gift. It dwells within the 
realm of the phenomena and sensations of purely animal life, 
and, under these circumstances, the very urgency of its reli- 
gious emotions intensifies the unspiritual and immoral nature 
of the result. Even the higher influences which were present 
in the developed worship of Dionysus failed to separate the 
quickened religious enthusiasm from these evil ingredients 
and results. Thus naturalism, reinforced by the desire for 
the Infinite, with the enthusiasm which it produces, ends 
not -with a more spiritual worship, but with a demoralizing 
frenzy. 

On the other hand, there were the M3^steries. These rep- 
resented in Greek religion a survival of the old naturalism 
under the conditions of Hellenic worship. This survival was 
used as a basis alike of semi-philosophic teaching and of 
mystic religious rites. The same combination of the beautiful 
and the repulsive is found here as elsewhere, due to the same 
causes. The subject of the Mysteries is the processes of 
physical life in nature and in man. The object of its exalta- 
tion is to bring the worshiper into communion with the 
spirit of these physical processes. Doubtless the unity of the 
world and life causes the light of the spiritual to shine through 
the natural, and makes the natural the vehicle of certain 
higher truths and influences. Yet both the mysticism and 
the secrecy are unfavorable to the development of moral life, 
because in the Mysteries, despite all the ritual warnings which 
were given against sin, and the demand of purity of intention, 
man sinks from his position as a spiritual and moral being to 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 189 

the level of merely animate and animal nature, seeking to under- 
stand and to do reverence to those features of life which he has 
in common with the vegetable and animal world, instead of 
transcending them. 

II. The second type of religion to be considered is that of 
Ancestor-worship and Animism. Such worship has been, and 
still is, widely prevalent. It remains the predominant religion 
in China, Japan, and, in lower forms, among many savage 
races. Its social and political consequences are strongly 
marked. Whether in its nobler or in its baser forms, it has 
probably arisen from the appearances of the ghost, either in 
dreams or as an apparition. Its subsequent course of develop- 
ment, whether upwards towards a developed family cult, or 
downwards towards the most degrading superstitions, depends 
upon the moral worth of the particular race, and upon the 
persistence of reverence and affection towards the dead. It is 
associated closely with the due tendance of the corpse, a duty 
which, as is well known, has assumed great proportions in 
almost all early religions, as can be seen, for example, in the 
conspicuous instance of the tombs of Egypt. Such tendance 
springs not merely out of feelings of respect and affection for the 
deceased, but out of the belief that the continued life of the spirit 
in the unseen world stands in close connection with the proper 
sepulture and even permanence of the corpse. 

The subsequent course of the development of ancestor-worship 
may take either of two directions. In the first place, it may 
lead to the establishment of a hierarchic series of divinities, 
approaching, in many respects, at the highest to what Theists 
understand by deity. In such cases there is generally to 
be found a threefold worship — ^the domestic worship of the 
family ancestor, the communal worship of the tribal ancestor, 
and, as the nation comes into fully organized existence, 
the national worship of the more or less mythical founder 
of the nation as its supreme divine ruler. Such a devel- 
opment is maintained so long as ancestor-worship remains 
either the recognized, or, at any rate, the most influential, 
religion of the people. 

On the other hand, such worship may be subordinated, 
either originally or by gradual loss of influence, to other 



190 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

forms of religion. In that case, there may come to be gods 
of the upper and gods of the lower world. For example, in 
Greece, Zeus reigns in heaven, Pluto among the shades beneath. 
Thus as the sphere of the dead is found in the under-world, 
and not in the upper, their suppposed influence is lessened both 
in range and power till it becomes simply a disturbance of 
the normal due to some exceptional conditions. Associated 
with and, it is suggested by some, resulting from ancestor- 
worship comes the imagination of nature-spirits inhabiting and 
presiding over the grove or the stream or the mountain. The 
world is thickly peopled with nymphs and naiads, dryads and 
other unseen beings having a local and limited influence over 
men. Such beings become the subjects of myths and fairy-tales. 
Here is found the connecting-link between ancestor-worship and 
naturalism. 

It has been frequently assumed, as by Mr, Herbert Spencer 
and those who represent the ordinary evolutionary view of 
religion, that ancestor-worship is the one primitive form of 
religion and the root of all its higher developments. To such 
a view the strongest objections must be taken. In the first 
place, there is some evidence, as has already been seen,^ of a 
primitive belief in a universal Father, who is not a first ancestor 
merely, but, so far as the primitive mind is able to conceive 
Him, the Creator of man and of the world. According to 
such evidence, spirit-worship is an intrusion, becoming more 
and more influential in exact proportion as the particular race 
deteriorates. 

In the next place, there is no passage from ancestor- 
worship, as such, to a religion which includes the whole world 
or reaches back to the origin of all existence. The ancestor, 
however influential he may be conceived to be, is still a finite 
individual, who has appeared in the world, and passed out of 
it in the way which is natural to all human beings. If, as 
he recedes into the background, he should ever come to be 
treated as practically sovereign over nature, this can only be 
because a whole range of considerations drawn from the 
sources studied in the previous chapter operates upon the 
primitive belief. In short, this will only happen when 

1 See pp. 151-4 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 191 

the Iiighest and deepest influences which lie at the heart of 
religion have adopted and more or less transformed what was 
originally an interloper. In particular, where, as in the Shinto- 
worship of Japan, the supreme ancestor tends to be conceived 
almost in the light of a creator, this is due probably in the first 
instance to external influences, existing side by side with and 
modifying, but not superseding, the previous religion. In ad- 
dition to this, it is due to an instinctive metaphysical sense of 
the general relations of spirit to nature, of mind to matter, 
which is not involved in ghost-worship pure and simple, whether 
considered as expressing a belief in the continued survival of 
the dead, and as cultivating reverence and affectionate relations 
with them, or as due to the fear of them as a disturbing presence 
to be driven away. 

In the third place, it is very clear that from the beginning 
other influences more abiding than the occasional apparition 
of ghosts must have operated on the mind of early man. 
After all, even primitive man was more than a gluttonous 
savage, troubled at night with bad dreams. Despite such 
ghosts, however frequent they may have been, he was a human 
being surrounded by the universe of natural phenomena, with 
their ordered march, their seasonal changes, and their beneficent 
or harmful disturbances. These changing influences upon him 
must have appealed to him as early and as forcibly, to say the 
least, as the occasional visits of departed spirits. Hence, not 
to speak of primitive Theism, at least the factors which go 
to create nature-worship must have been as primitive as those 
which go to create the worship of ancestors. Of course, the 
developed cult of a supreme ancestor is immeasurably superior 
to the superstitious fear of, or belief in, ghosts. But it is 
evolved from such lower forms of spirit-worship, and while 
ultimately it may tend to cover the whole field of religion, 
and to displace all other conceptions of divinity, as in Shinto- 
worship, yet in. the earliest stages, before deliberate creative 
effort plays its part in the making of religion, other influences 
must have affected men as directly as that of departed spirits. 
Indeed, there seems evidence that naturalism and ancestor- 
worship have existed side by side in varying proportions, and 
that there has come in different religions a period when it has 



192 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

become necessary to establish some kind of relations between 
the two. This has been done when the supreme god, probably 
the Sun, has been connected with the first ancestor of the 
race, or with its first recognized and perhaps mythical ruler, as 
Father. 

The social consequences of ancestor-worship are every- 
where apparent. Such worship is connected with patriarchal 
or communal government. It does much to strengthen family 
bonds, not only between the living and the departed, but 
through the common homage, which all the living must pay 
to the departed, between the living themselves. The family 
feasts which bring together the remotest kindred to pay 
common honor to an ancestor undoubtedly strengthen the 
family bond. They deepen loyalty and affectionate remem- 
brance. They strengthen the spirit of subordination, which 
is one of the most striking characteristics of such races as the 
Japanese. Within somewhat narrow limits such a religion 
gives expression to the sense of supernatural purpose, guidance, 
and help, manifest in human life. Moreover, it emphasizes, 
though in an inadequate way, the truth that, of all which 
reality contains, the spiritual and personal is most entitled to 
worship. No religion, certainly not the Christian, is entirely 
hostile to the general view by which such worship is explained. 
The marks of the sense of community between the living and 
the dead are dimly present in the Old Testament, and are 
strongly manifest in the New. The religion of the risen, 
ascended, and spiritual Christ cannot deny a measure of 
truth to that tendency of the human mind which refuses 
altogether to part company with the departed, or to set 
up an absolute gulf between the world of spirits and that of men. 
Even scientific men, to whose temper in the past we owe the 
present sense of abstract opposition between the visible and the 
invisible, are many of them coming on scientific grounds to 
modify this sense of opposition. 

On the other hand, it is very easy to perceive both the 
evil and the shortcomings of such religion. The reverence 
for the past, and respect for the family bond, upon which such 
stress is laid in ancestor-worship, lead practically, as can be 
seen, to such conservatism as that of China, to the tyranny 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 193 

of the past over the present, of custom over inspiration, of 
authority over the individual. The individual is sacrificed to 
the community, not perfected in it. The present is bound in 
the chains of slavery to the past, and the seen, which is the 
sphere of man's activities, is in most cases surrendered to the 
unseen, conceived in such inadequate forms that it becomes 
practically the mystic presence of antiquity. If this result 
is ever avoided, as is the case to a large extent in Japan, it 
is because worship becomes little more than affectionate and 
grateful remembrance and sense of continued solidarity with the 
departed. The Divine, even at the highest point, remains finite 
and merely external to man. No ultimate or unifying principle 
binding the whole universe together in an all-comprehending 
union is present, nor can it be developed from such religion 
without an admixture with it of elements which have no natural 
connection with it, either in the original influences out of which 
it sprang, or in the consequences which are logically bound up 
with it. 

III. The next type of religion which claims attention is 
the Humanism of the Greeks. Hellenic religion represents 
the latest and most artistic form of religion which prevailed 
in Greece. That religion contains elements derived from the 
early cults, commonly known as Pelasgian, and representing 
the nature-worship of the early inhabitants of Greece. It 
embodies certain elements which were imported into it from 
Oriental religions, and particularly from Phoenicia. But in 
its developed form it is above all the work of great poets, 
'^specially of Homer and Hesiod, though undoubtedly this 
literary religion never fully absorbed or superseded the rich 
and many-sided naturalism of ordinary Greek worship. 
These names stand not so much for individuals as for the 
creative efforts of many poets, who reproduced and developed 
under literary forms the beliefs as to faith and morals which 
became prevalent in the Greek mind. The religious con- 
ceptions thus expressed underwent still further development 
at the hands of the great tragic poets, Aeschylus and Sophocles. 
From that time they began to be disintegrated by the 
influences of rationalist or skeptical philosophy, as becomes 
apparent in the tragedies of Euripides, and in the rough 



194 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

handling which the gods receive in the comedies of Aristo- 
phanes. The early stage of Hellenism as presented to us 
in Hesiod shows not only the growth of artistic conceptions and 
of religious myths, but the awakening of a spirit of philosophical 
and ethical reflection. In its results are contained the 
germs of those later philosophical tendencies which ulti- 
mately broke off from Greek religion and received inde- 
pendent development. Hellenic religion, as distinguished on 
the one hand from the primitive nature-worships, and on 
the other from those deeper elements which found expression 
in the great conceptions of the tragedians, is an embodiment 
rather of the beautiful than of the true or the good. Its 
monument is to be found not so much in the religious or 
moral condition of the people as in the marvelous remains of 
its classic art. Undoubtedly some of the worships contained 
in it did provide the cement of religious inspiration, the sense 
of religious obligation to the constitution of the state. In 
particular, at times and in places, the worship of Zeus, Apollo, 
and Athena gave expression to a lofty ideal of religion; in 
the case of Zeus to growing Monotheism, in the case of Apollo 
to the idea of religious inspiration and its serviceableness to the 
progress of life, and in the case of Athena to the humane ideals 
of a refined civilization. 

But to the last there is something artificial about the 
constitution and conception of the Hellenic Pantheon as 
derived from Homer. It is a literary, and not a religious, 
creation. This very fact made it unstable, liable to modifica- 
tion at the hands of advancing reflection, and to encroachments 
from the side of more enthusiastic religion. Its motive i^ 
indeed not purely literary. It aims at unifying distinct 
worships in a graded system, at subordinating the various 
divinities which it recognizes to the supreme godhead of 
Zeus by means which reflect the ordered functions of govern- 
ment in a Greek oligarchy. The fullest measure of religious 
feeling belongs to the nature-worships and myths, by which 
it is colored. Sufiicient has been said of these in the section on 
nature-worships. 

Yet when note has been taken of the lack of inspiration, 
of the literary character and political aims of Hellenic 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 195 

religion as molded by Homer, it remains distinguished as 
the one great expression in the history of religion of pure 
Humanism. The gods are magnified and etherealized men 
and women; men and women, also, in whom the intellectual 
and moral qualities of the Greek race — its virtues and its 
vices — are writ large. In no case is it more conspicuously 
true that man makes the gods. Hellenic religion stands 
as a witness that what God is, is to be discovered, not by 
attempting to get outside man, but by idealizing him. The 
wonder and seductions of nature, while still felt, have ceased 
entirely to enthrall. Man himself has become the subject of 
the highest wonder and interest; is seen now in his dis- 
tinction from, and superiority to, nature. The giants of 
natural forces have been hurled from heaven in order that 
their place may be taken by the ordered power of rational 
self-consciousness and will. But the religion never altogether 
escapes from finitude. The multiplicity of the divine is never 
completely transcended. The Many are never effectively sub- 
ordinated to the One. A growing effort in this direction is 
made, but it never completely succeeds. The gods personify 
various functions, interests, and moral or intellectual qualities 
of human life. An attempt is made to treat them as sub- 
ordinated to the supreme god Zeus, in whose connection 
with heaven and conceived relationship as Father a trans- 
formation of previous nature-worship, and of a yet more 
primitive faith in the Divine Being as Father of men, can be 
discerned. The developed belief in Zeus embodies from time 
to time lofty ethical ideals and germs of noble theistic 
thought. It can even be stretched to include, in the hymn 
of Cleanthes, the Pantheism of the Stoics. But, on the 
whole, the other gods are too many and too strong for 
Zeus. The frank and crude anthropomorphism of the whole 
prevents a complete escape from the limits of finitude. 
Hence, because Zeus never becomes firmly established as the 
perfect Infinite and Absolute Beiag, he remains, with some 
notable exceptions, the creature of Necessity and the servant 
of Fate. 

The very insufficiency of such a religion, whether 
regarded from the spiritual or from the intellectual standpoint. 



196 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

incites to the provision and development from outside of sup- 
plementary religious conceptions. Just as Hellenic religion 
generally is unable perfectly to absorb more primitive elements 
or so to satisfy the religious needs of the Greek race as to 
prevent intrusion from outside, so the worship of Zeus can only 
occasionally and fitfully satisfy completely the idea of the true 
object of religion. Necessity, fate, the working throughout the 
universe and in human life of great impersonal laws making for 
a transcendent righteousness, are discerned, and for the most 
part Zeus is subject to their working rather than their living 
embodiment. 

Thus, there is on the surface of Hellenic religion such a 
development of humanism in religion as presents a community 
of heavenly beings dazzlingly bright with aesthetic charm, 
but making a most imperfect appeal to religious needs, and 
unable to stand the test of rational deflection. And behind 
these is the impersonal Divine, seen as a spiritual power, 
encompassing and controlling alike gods and men and the 
world, which calls forth in their utmost intensity the senti- 
ments of awe and dread, and abases the serious man in humble 
submission. Yet while such profounder conceptions deepen 
the sense of the solemnity and the mystery of life, they rep- 
resent the Divine as rather to be reckoned with than to be 
trusted, and depress rather than exalt the moral personality 
of man. Eeligion in this, its more august form, represses more 
than it inspires, provokes the finite longing of human desire 
in order to extort its final surrender to the inexorable decree. 
Thus there is a continual struggle between two unreconciled 
elements in religious life — ^the consciousness and desire of life, 
and the sense of law. Each element has its peculiar object. 
The vivacity of sparkling life finds itself at home in the festivals 
of the joyous Hellenic divinities; but when experiencing the 
deeper solemnities of life, the more thoughtful spirits with- 
draw from the divinities of the popular religion into the 
presence of masters of human destiny, who are as cheerless as 
they are sublime. 

IV. Confucianism or Moralism in religion. Confucianism 
may be held to represent the prevailing religion of China. 
Its literature belongs to the classics of the Chinese people. It 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 197 

represents a blending of nature-religion, verging upon Mono- 
theism, with ancestor-worship, and with a prevailing moralism 
which reflects both the peculiar bent of Confucius himself and 
the characteristics of the Chinese race. Confucius was a great 
moral influence in the life of China, rather than a channel of 
directly religious inspiration. Hence Confucianism represents 
religion passing into mere moralism. Even in respect of moral 
influence, Confucius is not one of the great creative forces, but 
rather a conservative influence, giving expression to well- 
recognized principles of family, social, and national life. He 
calls himself "a transmitter, and not a maker, believing in and 
loving the ancients" {Analects, vii. 1). 

Confucius was born in the year B. C. 55. He was of 
exemplary morality. His own description of liis life is given 
in the Analects. "The Master said, 'At fifteen I had my 
mind bent on learning. At thirty I stood firm. At forty 
I had no doubts. At fifty I knew the decrees of heaven. At 
sixty my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. 
At seventy I could follow what my heart desired, without 
transgressing what was right'" {Analects, ii. 4) — a descrip- 
tion which sets before us an estimable, if a somewhat self- 
complacent, character. Yet Confucius was distinguished by 
an ardent love of truth. One of his sayings was, "They who 
know the truth are not equal to those who love it; and they 
who love it are not equal to those who find delight in it" 
{Analects, vi. 18). Again, when it was reported to him that 
one of the dukes had inquired about his characteristics, and 
had received no answer, Confucius said, *'Why did you not 
say to him, 'He is simply a man, who in his eager pursuit of 
knowledge forgets his food> who in the joy of its attainment 
forgets his sorrows, and who does not perceive that old age is 
coming on" {Analects, vii. 18). He is described as having 
had no "foregone conclusions, no arbitrary predeterminations, 
no obstinacy, and no egoism" {Analects, ix. 4). When asked 
how virtue was to be exalted and delusions to be discovered, 
he said, "Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, 
and be moving continually to what is right — ^this is the way 
to exalt one's virtue" (Analects, xii. 10). Despite certain 
moods of self-complacency, the humility of Confucius was on 



198 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the whole strongly marked. The following may be taken as a 
sample of many similar sayings. "In letters," he remarks, "I 
am perhaps equal to other men ; but the character of the superior 
man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I 
have not yet attained to" (Analects, vii. 32). 

That which distinguishes the moral teaching of Confucius 
above all else is his unquestioning loyalty to the existing order 
of things. The laws of heaven, the laws of the state, the 
customs of the family, are all alike sacred to him. Human 
well-being depends preeminently upon reverent submission to 
these laws. Such submission involves due subordination to the 
recognized authorities by whom these laws are represented. 
"Extravagance," he said, "leads to insubordination, and parsi- 
mony to meanness. It is better to be mean than to be insubor- 
dinate" (Analects, vii. 35). 

His ideal of well-being in the state is thus expressed: 
'^There is government when the prince is prince and the 
minister is minister; when the father is father and the son is 
son" (Analects, xii. 11) — that is to say, when all constituted 
authorities exercise their rightful powers, and all others duly 
submit to them. In the same sense he declared, "What is 
necessary is to rectify names" (Analects, xiii. 3), by which he 
means that all disorder arises where a man's conduct departs 
from the meaning of the name by which his true relations to 
others are described. At the same time, Confucius recognized 
the responsibility of public authorities to secure the well-being 
of those who are governed by them. As he says, "Good 
government obtains when those who are near are made happy, 
and those who are far are attracted" (Analects, xiii. 16). The 
good effect of such a state of things will be unquestioning 
contentment among the people. "When right principles pre- 
vail in the Empire, there will be no discussions among the 
common people" (Analects, xvi. 2). The pursuit of virtue is 
therefore dominated by this highest law of duty. "To subdue 
one's self and return to propriety is perfect virtue. If a man 
can for one day subdue himself and return to propriety, all 
under heaven will ascribe perfect virtue to him" (Analects, 
xii. 1). This saying shows how the dominant ideal of sub- 
mission tends to produce as its result and as its safeguard 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 199 

that deference and courtesy of demeanor which is so strongly- 
marked in China. When asked further about perfect virtue, 
Confucius said, "It is when you go abroad to behave to everyone 
as if you were receiving a great guest ; to employ the people as if 
you were assisting at a great sacrifice ; not to do to others as you 
would not wish done to yourself ; to have no murmuring against 
you in the country, and none in the family" {Analects, xii. 2). 
The carrying out of maxims like this creates the elaborate 
ceremonial, but also the gentle graciousness of the best types of 
Chinese civilization. 

While having few or none of the characteristics of a great 
seer or prophet, Confucius had yet a very deep sense that his 
gifts and mission were divinely bestowed. When his life was 
threatened, he said, "After the death of King Wan, was not the 
truth lodged here in me? If Heaven had wished to let this 
cause of truth perish, then I, a future mortal, should not have 
got such a relation to that cause. While Heaven does not let 
the cause of truth perish, what can the people of KVang do 
to me?" (Analects, ix. 5). Similarly, he says, "Heaven pro- 
duced the virtue that is in me. Hwan T%y — ^what can he do 
to me?" (Analects, vii. 22). This sense of dependence gives 
religious significance to a passage which closely follows, in 
which Confucius is reported to have said, "Is virtue a thing 
remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! virtue is at hand" 
(Analects, vii. 29). 

Eeligion, therefore, was conceived by Confucius as virtue; 
and virtue consisted for the most part in the spirit of sincere 
submission to the laws laid down by constituted authorities, 
divine and human. The discovery of the meaning of these 
laws constituted the great task of learning, and needed for its 
achievement absolute sincerity of mind and heart. Yet Con- 
fucius, although reverent, was extremely reserved in the 
matter of religion. Where the Chinese classics, the She-King 
and the SJioo-King, had spoken clearly of a personal God, 
Confucius always preferred to use the ambiguous term 
"Heaven."^ According to the Analects, his frequent subjects 
of discourse were the Book of Poetry, the Book of History, 
and the maintenance of the relations of propriety (Analects, 

* See Legge, The Life and Teachings of Confucius, 5th edit., p. 100. 



200 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

vii. 17). He taught 'letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and 
truthfulness" (Analects, vii. 24), but "prodigious things, feats 
of strength, states of disorder and spiritual beings," he did not 
like to talk about (Analects, vii. 20). Thus, while Confucius 
accepted the religious thought and customs current in his 
time, both in regard to the divine government of the world 
and to the worship of ancestors, yet the whole stress of his 
influence was laid upon ethical interests; supreme among 
these being the essential moderation of the law-abiding spirit, 
respect for authority and order in the state, filial reverence 
and obedience in the home. The maxims and influence of 
Confucius entitle him to the highest respect, as the teacher of 
a worthy if somewhat narrow and inadequate moral ideal. 
Yet that ideal is insufficiently based upon religious certitude. 
It responds only to the ethical side of religious inspiration. 
It minutely defines a man^s attitude in the finite relations in 
which he is placed, but does nothing to satisfy the longings of 
his spirit to be lifted into the ampler world of a divine fellow- 
ship beyond these limitations. Divinity is for such a system 
conceived under the forms of externality, which are characteristic 
of moralism. God represents, at the highest, a controlling order, 
not a quickening spirit. 

V. Philosophical reactions from popular naturalistic 
religion. 

Some of the most remarkable developments in the history 
of religion appear in the form of reactions from popular faith. 
The history of Greek thought in this respect is familiar. 
Side by side with the ordinary naive nature-worship and 
humanism of the Greeks, as has been seen, there was 
developed the dread doctrine of Fate or Necessity, which in 
the treatment of great dramatic poets was used to set forth a 
transcendental and impersonal Law making for supremely 
righteous, though sometimes incomprehensible, ends. These 
conceptions supplied more or less the material, not merely of 
a profounder religion, but of a reflective theology based on 
philosophy. But philosophical reflection, as it advanced in 
Greece, raised ever wider and more purely intellectual issues 
than those of these great transcendental conceptions. The 
relations and relative degrees of reality of Being and Becoming, 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 201 

of the One and the Man}^, of Spirit and Matter, of Eeason and 
Sense, or rather of the objects presented to each — ^upon these 
great problems the whole of the Greek philosophy turned, 
however different may have been the answers given to each 
of these questions by different schools. The philosophy of 
Plato was a vindication of the supremacy in the universe of 
the conceptions of Eeason, understood, not as personal, but yet 
as active, sovereign, and architectonic. The philosophy of the 
Stoics gave a similar supremacy to Eeason, pantheistically 
conceived. Aristotle, holding the same general convictions as 
to the relations between mind and matter, investigated more 
fully the conception of Cause, and introduced the famous 
fourfold division of causes into formal, material, efficient, and 
final. The first two of these causes represented the relations 
between mind and matter in the universe in a way which was 
derived from the Platonic school, though differing in minor 
details; while the two latter introduced the conceptions of 
purpose and effective power, which are commonly understood 
when modern men speak of a cause. Under the influence of 
these last two Aristotle reached the conception of the Supreme 
Being, who is pure activity, and who. Himself unmoved, is 
by the power of His own attraction the source of universal 
motion. By this ordered motion the mutual relations of all 
the parts of the visible universe are controlled. Thus, by 
philosophical means, religion was purged from its naivete and 
finitude. The supremacy of a world-reason was vindicated 
in the system of Plato by means of the doctrine of the Ideas 
against the confused world of sensible objects and of becoming, 
which only deserved in the most imperfect way to be counted 
as real. The standard of worth set up by the moral judg- 
ment of men was satisfied by assigning supremacy over all 
the other ideas to the Idea of the Good. The Stoics dis- 
cerned the presence of Eeason in the world as a supreme law- 
giving and vitalizing principle, one throughout the whole and 
inseparable from the whole. Aristotle made the nearest 
approach to the Deity of what is called natural theology, 
considered as the cause of that whole, whose order, motion, 
and very existence are not self-explained, but must be traced 
back to an ulterior and infinite source, freed from all the 



202 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

limitations which are manifest in the visible creation. In all 
these philosophies, what is sought is not a philosophy of 
religion, but a rational explanation of the universe. Hence, 
while religious in spirit, the relationships manifested in 
religious experience are not set forth or investigated by 
them. 

Yet more striking for the present purpose is the reac- 
tion from popular religion manifest in the philosophy of 
Brahmanism. The genesis of this philosophy can only be ex- 
plained by taking into account the various influences which 
affected the Aryan conquerors of India as the result of many 
causes operating upon them after their settlement there. The 
early simple and vigorous nature-worship of the Yedas was 
speedily transformed. Those who held it were brought into 
external contact, and later were commingled with races holding 
a far inferior religion. The commixture of races resulted, as 
usual, in syncretism of religion. In this case it resulted, further, 
in a great deterioration of the Aryan race. In particular, 
religious development was influenced by the absorption of 
elements, which included the prevailing worship of Siva, the 
Destroyer, manifested in all the unfriendly influences of nature, 
and the temper of fear which selected such an object of worship. 
The whole spirit of religion was adversely affected by the adop- 
tion of the doctrine of metempsychosis, which has exercised so 
powerful an influence in many lower religions. Hence the 
sharp contrast between the Vedic religion and the later forms 
of Indian religion is to be explained, not as a process of 
development, but as the consequence of the introduction from 
without of disturbing and inferior influences. The Caste 
system reflects the history of this Aryan conquest and the 
settlement which succeeded it. The Brahmin, representing 
the priestly element, takes the highest place, and represents the 
supremacy of the religious interest in the life of the people. 
The Kshatriya, or military caste, to which all kings, princes, 
and rulers originally belonged, represented the conquering 
race; while the Vaisyas, or cultivators of the soil, and the 
Sudras, or laboring classes, represent the conquered inhabi- 
tants of the land. To this primitive organization were added 
as time went on the vast multitudes of outcastes. With the 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 303 

development of this social system came its religious consecration. 
Social organization represents not only divine law, but even 
ordered grades of divine creation. Thus the religious spirit 
of the people stereotyped, not only by religious sanction, but 
by theological dogma, the social gradations created by ruthless 
conquest, or by economic and industrial growth. Sacred 
law was developed side by side with the settlement of the social 
organization. 

The religion itself, however, has a twofold further develop- 
ment. On the one side is the creation of what are known as the 
Brahmanas, the collection of ritual precepts by which the popular 
religion is governed. On the other hand is the philosophy of 
the IJpanishads, with the elaborate body of commentaries 
furnished by the Vedantists. 

To some extent the same philosophical problems presented 
themselves to the Indian thinkers as were dealt with in the 
schools of Greece. But they were presented in the confused 
and imperfect way which was alone possible in the case of a 
race so inferior to the Greeks in general mental power. Yet 
the distinction and relations between being and becoming, sub- 
stance and phenomena, the permanent and the changing, the 
infinite and the finite, reality and the conscious perception of it, 
thought and the thinker, all are presented to us in an un- 
methodical way throughout the IJpanishads. The pressure of 
these intellectual distinctions was in itself sufficient to raise 
criticism of the popular religion — ^both as to the reality of its 
objects and the worth of its observances — in the mind of the more 
thoughtful and earnest; though with the lack of energy which 
characterizes Indian life, intellectual criticism never passed into 
a real movement of practical reform. 

But far more than intellectual causes were at work in 
the development of the philosophy of the IJpanishads. The 
system of religion presented to us is due to a variety of 
influences which have produced the deepest pessimism as to 
the meaning and worth of conscious life, and of all its 
experiences. In the first place, these influences are due to that 
infusion of inferior elements into the original Aryan religion 
to which reference has already been made. The prevalence 
of the spirit of fear, and the doctrine of transmigration, with 



204 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

its endless cycles of unsatisfying change and its manifold 
fonns of reincarnation, have profoundly altered the whole 
temper of religion. The growing sense of evil, the belief that 
this evil is a retribution for wrong done in previous states of 
existence, and that the cycles of sinning and suffering are 
practically inevitable and endless, made religion a standing 
witness to the hopelessness of conscious existence, however 
prolonged. The steady pressure of depressing influences 
deepened this conviction. India is a weary land to live in. 
The sensuous elements of life are brought by its climatic 
conditions into prominence. The burdens of sense, its weari- 
ness and troubles, the temptations which are inherent in it, 
all are accentuated, and this the more because of the 
depression of the active faculties which takes place in the 
enervating heat. Activity tends to be felt as in itself an 
evil, while the sensuous consciousness, with its troubles and 
its incitements, becomes a burden grievous to be borne. The 
blessedness of life is to be found in dreamy contemplation, 
while the moral task of life, if recognized, is conceived to be 
the ascetic purging away of the sensuous influences of life. 
When the present evils of existence are believed to be a 
retribution for misconduct in previous lives, the memory 
of which is absolutely blotted out, when the sensuous is beset 
with travail and temptation, and when the active pursuits 
of life tend only to accentuate the misery and to prolong the 
weariness of unsatisfying effort, it is not difficult to see what 
the conception of salvation is likely to become, unless some 
higher spiritual and moral influence supervene. Intellectually 
there will be a reaction from the finite, and from all the concep- 
tions which are contained within its range; morally, there will 
be a reaction from the practical concerns of such a finite 
existence; while, aesthetically, the weary soul will turn with 
longing to any prospect which promises the extinction of its 
conscious ills. 

The system of Brahmanism simply represents this result. 
In the first place, its doctrine of the Divine is derived 
from these influences. The experience of perception contains 
within itself the distinction between the perceiving subject 
and the perceived object. This becomes in reflection the 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 205 

distinction between the thinker and his thoughts. But it is 
possible so to hold the active and even the sensational in 
suspense that by a process of dreamy abstraction the subject 
may be wellnigh absorbed in his thought. The sense of 
distinction between the two may be for the time practically 
obliterated in reverie. Not only activity and emotion, but 
even self-reference in consciousness, may be wellnigh sus- 
pended. Under the conditions of Indian thought and life 
which have been described, such suspension appears to be 
the nearest approach to truth and blessedness. Hence the 
conception of an abstract and completely inactive Self — of a 
Thinker who is so one with his thoughts that all conscious- 
ness of self is lost in them, becomes the ideal. Such a Self 
is the only worthy conception of the Divine. The conception 
of such a Self, reached by the stripping off in successive 
layers of all that constitutes ordinary consciousness, can 
only be set forth by negatives. It is pure Being without any 
further definition, '^ords turn back from it, with the mind 
not reaching it.'* It can only be spoken of as "not this, not 
that." "It is thought by him that thinks it not ; he that thinks 
it knows it not; it is unknown to them that know it, known 
to them that know it not/'^ This is Brahma, whose name 
signifies Unlimited Vastness or Infinitude. "It is neither cause, 
nor not cause, nor both cause and not cause.^'^ "jt jg other than 
the known, above the unknown. This have we heard of the 
ancients, who proclaimed it to us."^ 

"This same imperishable is that which sees unseen, hears un- 
heard, thinks unthought, and knows unknown. There is no 
other than this that sees, no other than this that hears, no other 
than this that thinks, no other than this that knows.'* "Over 
this imperishable the expanse is woven woof and warp. As in 
dreamless sleep the soul sees, but sees not this or that, so the 
Self in seeing sees not.'** 



1 Kena Upanishad, quoted by Gough, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, 3d 
edit., p. 37. 

2 Sankara's Commentary on the Svetasvatara Upanishad, quoted by Gough, 
Tlie Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 39. 

' The Kena Upanishad, quoted by Gough, p, 39. 

* Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, quoted by Gough, The Philosophy of the 
Upanishads, p. 40. 



206 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

The closest human analogy therefore to the divine is to be 
found in dreamless sleep, in which the faculties exist, but without 
consciousness of their existence; during which their powers are 
presumed to persist in entire independence of an object. Com- 
pletely to strip off self-consciousness, with its finitude, its sensa- 
tions, its desires, and its sense of distinction between itself and its 
objects, this is to discover what the divine is, and to be at one 
with it. 

Hence, secondly, there is the reaction against the reality 
of the supposed objective world. In Greek philosophy, as 
has been seen, a distinction was made between Being and 
Becoming, and full reality was accorded to Being alone. 
But in the Brahman philosophy this is carried to much greater 
lengths. The ideal of the supreme Self, which stands for 
the divine, condemns to absolute unreality the objective 
world, and with it the whole of that active life of finite 
self-consciousness which stands related to it. Even one of 
the inspired sages of the Eig-Veda says of the external 
world, "It was not entity, nor was it non-entity.'^ ^ But 
the Vedantist philosophy, which was developed by the great 
Indian thinker Sankaracharya developed this doctrine of the 
unreality of the world till it took the final form which treats 
it as Maya, "illusion.'' The mystery of the world and life 
consists in the eternal union between Brahma, the Infinite 
Self, and Maya, this strange principle of unreality. To quote 
Gough's The Philosophy of the Upanishads, "Maya overspreads 
Brahman as the cloud overspreads the sun, veiling from it 
its proper nature, and projecting the world of semblances, the 
phantasmagory of metempsychosis."^ 

From this union between Brahma and Maya proceed 
successively the emanation, Isvara, which represents the sum 
of living things in dreamless sleep, the subordinate emanation 
of Hiranyagarbha, the same sum-total of living things in 
dreaming sleep, and the lowest of all, Viraj, this sum-total in 
active consciousness. Isvara, the first emanation from the 
infinite Self in its mysterious relation with illusion, is the 
creator both of the world presented to finite consciousness, 



1 See Gough, The Philosophy of the UpanisJuzds, p. 15. 
* Ibid., p. 46. 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 207 

and of finite consciousness itself. It is the author of an illusion 
which exists wherever, and lasts as long as, finite consciousness 
persists. To this world of illusion, the handiwork of Isvara, 
belong not merely men and things, but the divinities who are 
worshiped, the heaven and hell which the doctrine of retribution 
sets forth; in short, all the objects of popular religion and of 
common life.^ 

To this world of unreality belongs the whole of ordinary 
human consciousness. That which alone is real is the one and 
only Self. Finite individuality passing through the con- 
tinuous cycles of incarnation is but an emanation of the cosmical 
illusion. The true and abiding Self is clothed by means of 
this illusion in five successive vestures or folds, namely, the 
beatific, the cognitional, the sensorial, the vesture of the vital 
airs, and the nutrimentitious vesture or visible body in the world 
of sense.2 



1 Sankaraeharya's exposition of the Aitareya Upanishad thus describes the 
nature of spiritual entity. "First, there is the one and only Self, apart from all 
duality, in which have ceased to appear the various counterfeit presentments or 
fictitious bodies and environments of the worid of semblances; passionless, pure, 
inert, peaceful, to be known by the negation of every epithet, not to be reached 
by any word or thought. 

"Secondly, this same Self emanates in the form of the omniscient Demiurgus, 
whose counterfeit presentment or fictitious body is cognition in its utmost 
purity; who sets in motion the general undifferenced germ of the worids, the 
cosmical illusion; and is styled the internal ruler, as actuating aU things from 
within, 

"Thirdly, this same Self emanates in the form of Hiranyagarbha, or the 
spirit that illusively identifies itself with the raental movements that are the 
germ of the passing spheres. 

"Fourthly, this same Self emanates in the form of spirit in its earliest 
embodiment within the outer shell of things, as Viraj or Prajapati. 

"And finally, the same Self comes to be designated under the names of Agni 
and the other gods, in its counterfeit presentments in the form of visible fire and 
so forth. It is thus that Brahman assumes this and that name and form, by 
taking to itself a variety of fictitious bodily presentments, from a tuft of grass 
up to Brahma, the highest of the Deities." (See Gough, The Philosophy of the 
Upanishads, pp. 55, 56.) 

2 This philosophy of iinreality has become predominant in Hinduism, but it 
does not stand alone. The philosophy of the Sankhyas, which was developed 
in opposition to Buddhism, recognizes a real and independent principle of 
emanation called Prakriti, and a plurality of selves called Purushas. This 
philosophy represents a partial return to the view of common sense, necessitated 
by the practical needs of life and by polemic interests. But it is not in command 
of Indian thought, and does not represent the general tendency of the religious 
development. 



208 THE CHRISTIAN- RELIGION 

The doctrine of the supreme Self and of the unreality of 
the world determines, in the third place, a corresponding 
reaction in the doctrine of salvation. The immediate practical 
concern is to secure an escape from the fruitless succession of 
finite changes and release from the infliction of retribution, 
ceaselessly experienced throughout all these changes. The 
form of salvation must necessarily be the return to reality 
from the persistent illusion which perpetuates the misery of 
conscious existence. Blessedness is to be found in complete 
escape from Maya, the world-illusion, by coming to recognize, 
and thereby enter into, the true identity with Brahma, the 
eternal Self, which is alone real. The greatest text of the 
Upanishads is the text, "That art Thou,'' in which the identity 
of the finite individuality with the eternal Self is affirmed 
and reaffirmed.^ 

But this return to reality is by no means easy. It may, in- 
deed, require the effort of many successive lives to accomplish 
it. Within the sphere of experience it can only be carried 
out by a complete renunciation of all earthly ties and in- 
terests, and by successively stripping off the five vestures which 
have come to enwrap the true self. Salvation depends upon 
securing a condition of complete ecstatic exaltation, which in- 
volves an equally complete apathy so far as outward objects 
and interests are concerned. Under this influence all the, 
successive phases of conscious existence, higher or lower, 
are resolved into Brahma. The process by which salvation 
is wrought out leaves behind, therefore, all moral distinc- 
tions. Correct morality is indeed deemed necessary in the 
first stages of the process, but it is eventually superseded 
as being no less an illusion than its opposite. Elaborate 
steps must be taken to produce the abstraction necessary in 
order that this process of salvation may be carried on. In this 
process the recitation of the mysterious symbol, OM, in appro- 
priate posture, plays an important part. "The mystic utterance 
OM is the bow, the soul, the arrow, the Self the mark. Let it 
be shot at with unfailing heed, and let the soul, like the arrow, 
become one with the mark.''^ 



1 Sixth Prapathaka of the Chhandogya Upanishad. 

2 The Mundaka Upanishad, ii. 2. 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 

But the carrying on of this process of ecstatic contempla- 
tion cannot be immediately undertaken even by the Brahmin. 
He must pass through four stages of life. The first is that 
of Studentship. The second is the stage appointed for the 
payment of the three debts. The first of these debts is to 
the Eishis, the inspired and divine teachers of the past, and is 
paid by the repetition of the sacred hymns and texts. The 
second is paid to the Pitris, by begetting children; and the 
third is paid to the recognized gods, by offering the appointed 
oblations. The third stage is that of ascetic self-mortification. 
Only when all these stages have been passed through is the 
preparation for the fourth and final stage — that of contempla- 
tion — complete. The Self, having discharged its duties and 
been disciplined to a complete self-denial, is ready for the last 
stage of emancipation from the bondage of individuality and 
conscious life. 

In the whole doctrine and practice thus outlined there are 
features which reveal a spiritual philosophy spoiled by the deep- 
seated influence of pessimism. The Self in man, however im- 
perfect may be the conception of it, is treated as the revelation 
of inmost reality. It, and it alone, contains the key to the 
nature of all that is. Strip it of its finitude and behold the 
Divine. Witness is borne to the sense of kinship between the 
human and the Divine, to the immanence of the Divine in the 
human. The sense of separation from God, or of being apart 
from Him, is an illusion which salvation removes. The import- 
ance thus assigned to the Self, and to the unity of Selves, appre- 
hended as finite, with the Infinite Self, is an important contribu- 
tion to the philosophy of religion. 

But the method taken of arriving at true infinity by 
negation ends in empty abstraction. The real infinite is to 
be found by the addition, and not by the subtraction, of attri- 
butes. The reality which is at the heart of all things must 
be the sufficient reason, and not the negation of them all. 
Its infinity must be learned from its creative relations in life 
to the actual universe, and not merely by abstract speculation. 
The vision of the divine as the Infinite Self is indeed true. 
But its state is misconceived, and hence activity, sovereignty, 
and influence are denied to it. The result of this withdrawal 



210 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

into the nonentity of a pure abstraction is bewilderment 
among all the contradictions of a false infinity. Moreover, 
the whole idea and end of religion is nullified in the Indian 
process of salvation. Fellowship with the Divine is sought 
by the religion. The satisfaction of that demand, nay the 
demand itself, is destroyed by a doctrine which is not even 
that of absorption into the Divine, but depends upon the 
recognition of absolute identity with the Divine. A place is 
found for reflective contemplation, although reflective thought 
is itself left behind in the final ecstasy of contemplation, but 
affection and activity are dispossessed not merely from the 
service of true religion, but even from human nature itself as 
finally conceived. All the standards of spiritual and moral 
worth which have been gained by intense struggles and 
determination, together with the well-being of ordinary life, 
are absolutely discharged from their place in the nature both 
of God and of man. Such is the effect of a false conception of 
the meaning of infinity, both upon the doctrine of the nature 
of God and upon the religious ideal of man who feels himself 
akin to God and under the necessity of seeking a share in His 
infinity. 

This false theory of the infinite, coupled with weariness 
of the finite, is responsible for the doctrine of Maya. This 
doctrine rests upon an unprovable, unnatural, and inapplicable 
theory of universal deception. The standard of truth by 
which all else is tested and found to be false is artificial and 
impracticable. The assumption of universal falsity is in 
direct antagonism to every judgment of common sense, 
which, even if held to be equally unprovable, has at least 
the unvarying instinct of initial faith upon its side. Our 
starting-point is necessarily the reality and veracity of self- 
consciousness, and of the cosmos in and by which self- 
consciousness is realized. Naturally this must supply the 
standard of reality to us, and not a doctrine of the impersonal 
reached only by an elaborate process of artificial abstraction. 
Man has been made what he has become as the consequence 
of activity, assigning worth in varying degrees to the practical 
objects which he has sought. The subject, as revealed in 
finite consciousness, is relative to the object. If the object is 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 211 

absolutely unreal, so equally is the subject which exists 
only as one side in the antithetic relationship. Hence 
pure being falls into pure nothingness. And even a Divine 
Self, which contains no principle of objectivity, is in itself 
unthinkable. 

The contradiction involved in the theory of universal 
illusion is clearly marked in the philosophy itself. It has its 
Achilles^ heel, wherein it can be pierced with a mortal wound. 
For "it is everywhere taught in the Upanishads" that the 
doctrine of the Self, or Brahma, "was revealed by this or that 
god, or other semi-divine teacher, and handed down through 
a succession of authorized exponents.^^ There is a text, 
"A man that has a spiritual teacher knows the Self.^'^ But 
this spiritual teacher, whether he belong to the past or to th'e 
present, so far as he exerts personal influence, belongs to the 
world of illusion. How, then, can one whose whole doctrine 
and influence reduces him to the world of conscious and 
active existence be a trustworthy guide to the doctrine that 
the whole of conscious and active existence is illusory? On 
the view that the whole of the individual life is a falsity, 
a divine guide coming down into unreality and using its 
instruments in order that he may conduct us to a 
reality beyond, becomes a clear contradiction in terms. It is 
not wonderful, therefore, that both in theory and practice there 
should be a contradiction of the process by which man has 
become what he is. So far as man has attained deliverance 
from the reign of sense and sin, it has been by becoming a 
larger and intenser self in whom the fullness of spiritual and 
moral faculties has been realized. To reverse the process at 
the end is to be inconsistent with the whole principle of 
spiritual development. The difficulty of this position is 
clearly seen in the appointed means of practical redemption; 
for the Brahmin is enjoined in the earlier stages of his career 
to pay debts to the very falsity which it is his main business 
to escape. He is not only to honor gods who belong to the 
realms of unreality, but to secure the perpetuation of illusion 
by providing for the continuance of the human race in his 
offspring. And the contradiction is carried still further by 

1 See Gough, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 98. 



212 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the frank exclusion of the multitude from any hope of salvation. 
For them the ordinary concerns of life and the common ob- 
servances of established religion are sanctioned and prescribed. 
The way of salvation is a spiritual luxury, practicable only for 
the few. Even for the few it is possible only as a violent reversal 
of earlier stages of life equally enjoined as divine, and by a 
spiritual process which, in obedience to a speculatively impos- 
sible conception of reality, contradicts all that is immediately 
given as real. 

The next religion which we have to consider is Buddhism, 
which in its original form represents a still further reaction 
against popular religion than Brahmanism. The scanty 
information about the early life of Gotama is well known. 
Born between five and six hundred years before Christ, he 
was the son of a Eajah of the Sakya clan, and married his 
first cousin, the daughter of a neighboring Rajah, in early 
life. In his twenty-ninth year, after a long spiritual 
struggle, he finally abandoned his home. Having sought in 
vain from many teachers for a way of salvation, he devoted 
himself for six years to a life of penance. At the end of this 
time he passed through a second great crisis, and at its close 
attained under the Bo-tree of Buddha Gaya to that state which 
it was the business of his life from that time forward of salvation 
to proclaim. 

The essential meaning of Buddhism is to be found in its 
reaction from the whole doctrine of the Self, which is found 
in Brahmanism. The doctrine of the non-reality of all things 
is held with such thoroughness that it encroaches upon and 
destroys the reality of the primary Being which Brahmanism 
asserted. Thus in the first place as to the existence of the 
Infinite Self. It is true that the Buddha exhibited a large 
measure of tolerance for established beliefs, and for existing 
observances of life as far as they did not necessarily conflict 
with the purposes of his mission. But the Buddhist scriptures 
contain clear indications of the skeptical attitude which was 
taken up towards the existing theoretical beliefs. For 
example, in the Tevijja Sutta, Gotama is represented as 
carrying on an argument or discussion with two Brahmin 
inquirers, in which, having secured the admission that their 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 2X3 

teachers and authorities have never seen Brahma, and know 
not where, whence, or whither Brahma is, he scornfully ex- 
claims that the Brahmans say, ''What we know not, neither 
have seen, to a state of union with that can we show 
the way !"i 

Thus the primary Being of Brahmanism is resolved into its 
practical equivalent, !N"on-being. This doctrine of non-being 
provokes the opposition of Sankaracharya in his commentary 
on the Vedantas, in which he meets the arguments of the 
Buddhists, reaching the conclusion that "this tenet, then, of 
the emanation of the existent out of the non-existent is inad- 
missible; inasmuch as we see, on the one hand, that entity does 
not issue out of non-entity — ^you cannot make a bow out of a 
pair of hare's horns, or a garland out of sky-flowers; and, on 
the other hand, that entity does issue out of entity, as golden 
trinkets are made out of existing gold, and other things out of 
things that are.'^^ 

In the second place, this reaction against the existence of 
the Self is pressed in regard to the doctrine of man. Buddha, 
to some extent, accepts the faith of the Brahmins as to 
transmigration and retribution ; but in accepting it he transforms 
it by his disbelief in the importance, and even in the prin- 
ciple of individuality. The subject of transmigration is not 
so much the individual as the Karma, which represents the 
character formed in successive stages of existence. That 
which survives after death is not the individual, but his 
Karma, the total result of his mental and bodily actions.^ 
This Karma persists so long as it finds an individual with 
which it becomes one. But the existence of such an indi- 
vidual depends upon the persistence of that craving desire 
(Tanha), which is the cause of sentient life with all its 
troubles and evils. It is the craving to live in death which 
perpetuates the succession of lives, and with them the Karma, 
which becomes one with them. In the same way it is this 
craving which lights the fires of lust and hatred and of all 
the delusions which are bound up with conscious existence. 



1 Rhys Davids, Hibhert Lecture, p. 59. 

2 See Gough, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, 3d edit., pp. 188, 189. 
' See Rhys Davids, Hibhert Lecture, pp. 91, 92. 



214 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

The great task of life, therefore, is the destruction of 
Tanha; and this understood not merely as the transformation 
of inordinate affections and desires until they seek worthy 
objects in due proportion and in subordination to the supreme 
ends of life, but as the extirpation of that desire for life 
itself which is the source of all the consequent evils of mortal 
existence. The Booh of the Great Decease recounts how 
"the Blessed One addressed the disciples of Bhandagama, and 
said, ^It is through not understanding and grasping four 
conditions (four things), Brethren, that we have had to run 
so long, to wander so long, in this weary path of individuality, 
both you and 1/ And what are these four? The noble conduct 
of life, the noble earnestness in meditation, the noble kind of 
wisdom, and the noble salvation of freedom. But when the noble 
kind of conduct of life, of earnestness in meditation, of wisdom, 
and of salvation by freedom are seen face to face and are 
comprehended, then is the craving for existence rooted out, that 
which leads to renewed existence is destroyed, and there is no 
more birth." ^ 

This state of extinction of all desire for existence is Nirvana, 
a word which means "the going out, becoming extinct." To 
reach this condition of mind is to attain to the blessedness of 
Arahatship. This state of mind is essentially a condition 
of insight into the reality, or rather into the non-reality, 
of all things. The Booh of the Great Decease divides this 
insight into seven kinds: "Insight into impermanency, 
into non-individuality, into corruption, into the danger 
of evil-doing, into sanctification, into purity of heart, 
into Nirvana."2 To attain to this is to reach the blessedness of 
full salvation. 

Buddhism has three divisions into which its adherents 
are divided. In the first a common morality and observances 
are prescribed for ordinary people. The second marks the 
pathway of a recluse at the outset, but only those who enter 
upon the third, "the noble eightfold path," as it is called, 
reach the highest and true system of Buddhism, in which the 
impulse which leads in the second stage to abandonment of 
the ordinary relationships and interests of the world becomes 

» See Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lecture, pp. 99, 100. 2 Ibid., p. 207. 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 315 

completed in the discipline by which the craving after life itself 
is overcome. 

Such is the general doctrine and discipline of Buddhism. 
But if Buddha was distinguished on one side by skepticism as 
to the reality, and pessimism as to the worth of life, he was 
also distinguished for the graciousness, the gentleness, and 
sympathy of his disposition. Hence, in the first place, the 
universalism of his doctrine of salvation. The way of sal- 
vation is not reserved exclusively for the favored Brahmin 
caste, but is open to any one, however humble, who will 
resolve to seek after it. It is a message of salvation to all. 
In the next place, the kindliness of Buddha seeks to eliminate 
the evils of existence, and to destroy the inordinateness 
of desire, by consideration of all living things. Yet while 
universalism and gentleness represent the gracious spirit of 
the Buddha, the essence of his system is, as has been seen, 
thorough-going belief in the unreality of all things, including 
not merely the realm of objects perceived, but also the subject 
which perceives them. Buddhism therefore represents the 
transformation of Brahmanism on the one side by a 
more thorough-going skepticism, and on the other by a sym- 
pathetic humanitarianism. Eenunciation is its solitary and 
all-comprising virtue. Yet that renunciation is enjoined, not 
in consideration of the value of human fellowship or of the 
worth of universal ends, but because of a recognition of 
the worthlessness of life, with all its concerns and relation- 
ships, and as essential to individual salvation. While, therefore, 
self-renunciation in Buddhism may assume the form of 
sublime unselfishness, and in many respects resemble self- 
renunciation in the Christian life, its grounds, ends, 
and essential spirit are totally unlike. In Christianity it is in 
order to the perfecting of human fellowship. In Buddhism 
it is undertaken with a view to the speedier extinction of the 
beings upon whose existence fellowship depends. The conunon 
element in the two is simply to be found in the pitifulness 
which is the mark of both, and which in one respect becomes 
deeper in the case of Buddhism than in that of Chris- 
tianity, because in the former case it is entirely unrelieved by 
hope. 



216 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

In the practical spirit of Buddhism there seems to be an 
inversion of the true method of ethical life. Blessedness, as 
ordinarily understood, is the reward of striving. Its nature, 
as conceived, determines the spirit in which the striving after 
it is carried on. When blessedness is complete, striving comes 
to an end by reason of satisfaction. Buddhism, on the 
contrary, attempts to secure blessedness by suppressing, not 
by directing and satisfying, striving. Salvation is to be 
found in such separation from all the objects of life that self 
itself dies out; not in the attainment of worthy objects of 
desire. It represents the extreme recoil from the weariness 
of living, from the fever of unregulated desire, and from the 
conception of unending cycles of finitude which had become 
a burden too great to be borne. On the more philosophic 
side, it is the triumph of a purely sensational against a more 
spiritual or ideal explanation of existence. That it is so 
attractive is due, not to its essential view of life, but to the 
personality of its author. In comparing it with Brahmanism 
on its spiritual and ethical side, one is forced to discuss the 
relative worth of a godless love or of a loveless God; the 
latter being the result of the whole view of the relation of 
the Divine Being to the world of finite existence set up 
by Brahmanism. In one sense, Buddhism is more consistent than 
Brahmanism, for it is impossible permanently to maintain the 
reality of Self, whether infinite or finite, when the reality of the 
objects of Self has been entirely dissolved. 

On the other hand. Buddhism is open to the same general 
criticisms as have been offered in the case of Brahmanism. 
It is still further reaction against reality as revealed to 
us by the common sense and experience of mankind. Its 
doctrine of salvation is in an even extremer form a reversal 
of the process by which man has come to be what he is. It 
also fails of complete internal consistency; for while individu- 
ality in common with its objects is explained away, it becomes 
necessary to treat Karma, the result of that individuality, as 
being real, until by the suppression of desire in any particular 
case it is done away. Buddhism is superior, therefore, to 
Brahmanism simply in the sympathy which made it, so far as 
practical conditions allowed, not merely a discipline for the 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 317 

few, but a gospel preached to the many. When, however, it 
became a gospel preached to the many, it underwent of 
necessity a total transformation. Buddhism as a philosophy 
of life is for an elect few. Buddhism as a popular religion is 
compelled to restore to a large extent what has been taken 
away, by the doctrine which is set forth as to the person of its 
author. 

Buddhism as a popular religion depends not upon its 
ultimate philosophy of life, or upon its discipline, which is 
practicable only for the few, but upon the virtual deification 
of its author, arising out of homage paid to his noble ethical 
character. It is the Buddha, the gracious and benevolent 
teacher of mankind, accounted for by a growing wealth of 
mythological narratives, who takes the place of God in the 
Buddhist religion, and has given to it a popular influence, 
which could not result from its body of teaching as such. 
Thus the practical superiority of Buddhism as compared 
with Brahmanism is just this emphasis upon the ethical. 
Brah nanism has its faith in the Divine, but a faith so abstract 
thao personality, with all the moral distinctions which rest 
upon it, is dissolved away. Buddhism, without any theology, 
enthrones in the human heart and imagination the sublime 
/figure of a great moral personality, and of a moral personality 
distinguished by those graces of sympathy, gentleness, and 
unselfishness which represent the tenderer manifestations of 
love. In subsequent times the apotheosis of the Buddha took 
the form of representing him now as a supreme King, now as 
the perfectly wise Teacher. But whether as the former or 
as the latter, grace and goodness were the characteristics alike 
of his rule and of his teaching. Hence many of the practical 
results of religion have been wrought out by Buddhism, when 
its influence has been most living. Yet at its highest there 
remains the gulf fixed between the baselessness of all existence 
taught by the philosophy and the reality of the gracious 
personality adored by the religion. There remains also the 
fact that, great as is the regard paid to the moral personality 
of the founder, no means is found of interpreting the worth of 
that personality in its relations to any permanent meaning or 
ultimate end of the universe itself. ISTot only is the moral worth 



218 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION^ 

of the Buddha a spiritual portent unexplained by anything 
in the universe which gives it birth, but that portent in the 
world of being arises by a contradiction out of ultimate non- 
being and returns to it again. Thus, whatever may be the 
worth of the character of Buddha, or of his specific spiritual 
guidance, as to which it is not necessary now to offer any 
detailed criticism, it must be pointed out that the practical 
effort to supply an object of worship by means of the 
apotheosis of the Buddha is vitiated by the faults of the 
philosophic system of Buddhism as such. The want of God at 
the beginning cannot thus be atoned for at the end. Buddhism, 
therefore, fails absolutely to supply a primary need of religion, 
namely, an adequate spiritual basis for the activities of life and a 
rational explanation of those positive ends which such activities 
presuppose. 

VI. Dualism. — In many respects the transition from 
Brahmanism to Zoroastrianism represents as complete a 
contrast as can be conceived. And yet the most convincing 
evidence has established the descent of the religion of Zara- 
thustra from the same source as the religion of the Vedas. 
The personality of the supposed founder of the religion has so 
entirely faded that many have regarded him as a purely 
legendary personage. Probably this is a mistaken view, but 
at any rate it is entirely out of the question to attempt to 
discover what his positive contribution was to the religion, the 
only record of which Js now to be found in the scanty litera- 
ture of the Zend-Avesta. The common starting-point both of 
the religion of the Avesta, so long prevalent in Iran, and of 
the Vedic religion is to be found in the elements of a common 
nature-worship, which, while characteristic of the Yedas, leave 
their traces everywhere throughout the Avesta. Zoroastrianism, 
originally the religion of the Magi in Media, gradually 
spread over the Persian empire and attained an ascendency 
which only gave way when extreme and puerile developments 
of it exposed it as an easy prey to the advancing forces of 
Mohammedanism. \\Tiile Zoroastrianism can be traced back 
to a common source with the Vedic religion, the subsequent 
development is, as has been said, completely different. In the 
case of Brahmanism, the mixture of races leading to the 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 219 

adoption of inferior beliefs and practices, together with other 
effects of the environment, resulted in the development of a 
religion growing ever less practical and moral. Brahmanism 
represents the vagueness of ecstatic contemplation in its 
extremest form. Zoroastrianism, on the other hand, stands 
for a practical and ethical energ}^ unequaled an}nvhere else 
in ancient religion, save only in that of the Old Testament. 
It is the worship, in the first place, of Ahura Mazda, the Lord 
of Wisdom, a personal, spiritual, and beneficent being who 
approaches nearly to the God of pure Theism. While, as his 
name signifies, a spiritual personality, the descriptions of him 
are not free from traces of previous nature-worship, and there 
are clear evidences that he has only gradually attained to the 
primacy of an unquestioned dominion. Other divinities, how- 
ever, of a previous stage of the religion, have by the time of 
the Avesta sunk to a subordinate position, so that he repre- 
sents a divine sovereignty over the whole hierarchy of heavenly 
beings, and over all terrestrial existences, so far as they are 
beneficent. 

But Zoroastrianism is face to face with the mystery of 
evil. It is impossible for it, with its practical spirit and its 
energy, to explain that mystery away. Evil is in itself a 
reality so definite and intractable, that it is impossible to 
trace its origin back to Ahura Mazda, or indeed to allow the 
assumption that Ahura Mazda is absolutely supreme. Evil 
must be traced to a source distinct from and independent of 
him. That source is Angra Mainya, developed probably from 
a storm-god. He represents an originally malign power, who 
thwarts the purposes of Ahura Mazda, confronts every act of 
his by an evil counterpart. The phenomena of nature, the 
classes of animals, the characteristics of men, are divided as the 
sheep from the goats. Those which approve themselves as? 
good to the judgment of the author of this religion are seen 
to be the creation of the servants of Ahura Mazda. Those, on 
the other hand, which are accounted evil, are credited to 
Angra Mainya. Between those two opposing forces, with their 
attendant hosts, a ceaseless warfare is carried on within the 
system of the universe. In this warfare the ethical faith of 
Zoroastrianism counts upon a final victory for Ahura Mazda 



220 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

and his forces over the opposing power of evil. Meanwhile this 
warfare prescribes the conditions of moral life to man. It is his 
business to keep himself apart from Angra Mainya and all his 
works, and to take part in the warfare by which evil is to be 
overcome of good. In this he is from time to time assisted by 
the appearance of saviors, who arise as the leaders and deliverers 
of their fellow men. 

The optimism which prevails in Zoroastrianism as to the 
ultimate end of the great strife, together with that endeavor 
after effective unification of the system of the world for 
thought which theistic belief always prompts, made it im- 
possible for this religion permanently to be content with so 
extreme a dualism. The later stages of the religion, therefore, 
were marked by efforts to reduce the principle of evil till it 
becomes a subordinate aspect of Ahura Mazda, or to deduce 
both the one and the other from a First Principle including 
both. But, taking the religion as it stands in the Avesta, the 
dualism is, so far as the use of experience is concerned, crude 
and exaggerated, while the explanation given is in clear oppo- 
sition to that objective unity of the world in one system of 
law which is brought home, not only by scientific investiga- 
tion, but by the demand for complete unity in thought, which 
is the primary impulse of philosophy. As to the former, there 
is confusion between phenomena and creatures causing incon- 
venience and danger to man on the one hand, and evil tempers 
and passions which are traceable to a moral source on the 
other. The whole arrangement is entirely haphazard, de- 
pendent upon the immediate and apparent interests of men, 
and not upon any knowledge of the part which the facts 
complained of play in the whole economy of the world. The 
moral evil which is traced back to a quasi-divine creation is, 
by that very means, more or less justified and entrenched in 
existence, although the motive of its creation may be diabolic. 
Its very independence tends to make it impervious to the 
good. The moral energy of Zoroastrianism declared war upon 
evil and predicted its extinction; but its theoretic basis, by 
making the source of evil as original as the source of good, 
by separating things evil into a distinct class of existences, 
and by conceiving the whole process by which good overcomes 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 221 

evil by means of the cruder associations of warfare, renders it 
impossible to attain either a satisfactory philosophy of the 
universe, or to supply any suflScient guidance and inspiration 
for the inner tasks of the spiritual and moral life. Thus 
Zoroastrianism fell owing to irresistible influences both on 
the one side and on the other. Among the select minds, repre- 
sented by the small remnant of the modern Parsees, it gradually 
relinquished most of its distinctive features, ending in a system 
of Deism, with the addition of certain practices which repre- 
sent the continuance of that religious reverence for the 
elements — earth, air, fire, water — ^which has come down from 
ancient times. On the other hand, ordinary Zoroastrianism, 
developed by a sacerdotal caste, became ever more childish and 
servile in its observances and prescriptions owing to the in- 
curable habit of confusing moral with physical evil, and 
especially of regarding all the phenomena of decay as in them- 
selves evil, and hence brought within the sphere of the moral 
interests of religion. 

VII. The last form of religion other than Christianity to 
which attention must be drawn in Mohammedanism. Of this 
only a few words need be said. In the form in which it was 
proclaimed by its founder, Mohammed, it represents a doctrine 
of abstract Monotheism. In the strict sense of the term, this 
doctrine was not original, but was derived from the Jewish 
and Christian sources with which Mohammed was more or 
less familiar. The mission of Mohammed must be understood 
as primarily a protest against Christian Trinitarianism, tri- 
theistically conceived, against current superstitions which 
had established themselves in the effete Christian life with 
which he was familiar, and against the crude idolatry of the 
Arab tribes. It was against these, and particularly the last, 
that Mohammed, with the intense zeal of a convinced mono- 
theist and iconoclast, waged war. The substance of his 
testimony was to the abstract unity, the absolute sovereignty, 
and the omnipotent will of God. He claimed the practical 
authority necessary to carry out his reforming task and to 
enthrone his own dominant faith in the hearts of others, by 
adding the dogma that of the one sovereign and omnipotent 
God he was, in a unique sense, the Prophet. '^ Allah is Allah, 



222 ^ THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

and Mohammed is His Prophet/' becomes therefore the com- 
plete creed of the Mohammedan. A universe so conceived 
is simplified to the last degree. All that happens is imme- 
diately referred back to the fiat of the divine will. Fatalism 
becomes the key to the world's meaning as it affects the life 
of men. Submission, which is signified by the very term 
Islam, becomes the supreme and only duty of religion. Such 
was the conception of religion which appealed to the austerity 
of the Prophet. Owing to another and voluptuous side of his 
nature, which gradually manifested itself under the combined 
influence of prosperity and of the sense that as supreme 
Prophet he was a law unto himself, Mohammed, however, 
developed a doctrine of the rewards of Paradise, which afforded 
in the world to come ample and sensuous recompense for the 
submission which was exacted in the present. The supreme 
faith of Mohammedanism nevertheless reonains an abstract 
and rigid dogma. The form of it is explained by the fact of 
its being a protest against abuses existing round about the 
Prophet. Its simplicity and intensity were due to the peculiar 
temperament of the Prophet himself, although that temperament 
was so characteristically Arab that it evoked in the end a per- 
manent response from the Arab mind. 

The general view of all these religions which has now 
been completed has made it clear that each one of them 
transgresses at one or more points the principles which were 
laid down at the outset as essential to the final persistence 
and the general acceptance of any religion. It is not necessary 
exhaustively to summarize the particulars, after the detailed 
criticisms which have already been offered. Naturalism in 
all its forms becomes impossible as a religion directly man 
attains to the full dignity and maturity of self-conscious 
spirit. Ancestor-worship and humanism in its naive forms 
fail to satisfy directly he becomes sufficiently spiritual to 
demand moral perfection in the object of his worship. The 
developments of Oriental thought, whether in Brahmanism 
or Buddhism, are as impossible for thought as they are 
unavailable for practice, so long as men recognize the worth 
and the possibilities of conscious life. Above all is this the 
case so far as men realize the primacy and meaning of love, 



THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS 225 

alike as tlie highest possession of human spirits, as demanding 
for its satisfaction not only their permanence but their desire 
to be pennanent, and as becoming thereby the guiding clue 
to the nature and meaning of the universe. Again, men must 
transcend all forms of dualism so soon as they discover 
throughout the world the marks of unity and of system, and 
find further that unity and system are shown in a supreme 
law working in and through all things for the overcoming of 
evil by good. Finally, abstract Monotheism becomes im- 
possible directly men realize not only the transcendence but 
the immanence of God.^ It thereby becomes clear, not only 
from the point of view of scientific discovery, but also from 
that of gi'eat religious conceptions, that the method of God's 
dealing with the world is by a process of self-giving, of which 
evolution is a general description. Under that method, not 
only has positive life its assured place and worth, not to be 
destroyed by a bare formula of submission, but also religion 
in a world so ordered must not only make room for, but 
must actually be founded upon and develop the principle of 
freedom. 

Sufficient has been seen, however, to show that all these 
various religions flourish at different altitudes of the human 
spirit, and are natural to them. In no ease are they artificially 
created apart from general spiritual conditions, which alike 
fashion, foster, and maintain them. Each represents the natural 
effect of some real experience of the world, held at some stage- 
or other of the ascent or descent of the human spirit to be the 
determinative factor supplying the meaning of the whole. In 
some cases, as has been seen, the religion represents a reaction, 
strange and impracticable to other minds, from a received 
religion which has been found to be inadequate. The negative 
has assumed greater prominence as a contradiction than the 
positive which, while it casts aside that which is outworn, 
accepts the underlying principles of truth in it, and develops 
them in a more satisfying way. 

All these religions have brought their measure of spiritual 
satisfaction, and even of uplifting, to the human spirit, in 
certain stages and under certain conditions of its experience. 

1 Sufism, in Mohammedanism, bears witness to this. 



224 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Even when they have exliausted this service they are of perma- 
nent value to the religious history of mankind — for two reasons. 
In the first place, each one embodies some aspect, not only of 
general truth as imaginatively apprehended, but of spiritual 
need demanding satisfaction. In the second place, by means of 
them the various possibilities of the explanation of the world, 
its source, its meaning, and the ends which are to be wrought 
out and satisfied in it, are explored. These are left for the 
permanent guidance of the human mind, which brings them to a 
twofold test; first of all, by the standards of rational truth 
growingly apprehended, and secondly by those of the spiritual 
nature and its needs, as these are gradually unfolded in the life- 
history of the human race. By means, therefore, of these natural 
expressions of the human spirit in response to the various in- 
fiuences of the universe, all possible alternatives of world-ex- 
planation, of the conduct and satisfaction of life, are gradually 
laid bare. Their relative adequacy may be estimated, and the 
elements in them which are of abiding and universal significance 
are enabled to play their part in permanently affecting the faith 
and conduct of mankind. At the same time, as has been seen in 
detail, not one of the forms which have been reviewed can, 
owing to its shortcomings, be treated as permanently or univer- 
sally serviceable to mankind. Nor can any one of them be so 
completely rationalized as to give a final explanation of the 
world, assuming for the moment that the world is capable of 
receiving a completely rational explanation. 



CHAPTER IV 

CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 

WE come, in the next place, to consider how far 
Christianity fulfills the idea and satisfies the end 
of religion imperfectly set forth hy the ethnic 
religions which have been examined. In common with all 
other religions, hut in a preeminent degree, the Christian 
religion appears as a revelation. All other religions depend 
not only upon the idea, but also in some sense upon the 
experience of revelation. The solution of the mysteries of 
human life proposed, and the satisfaction of human needs 
offered by each, is something which has been received and not 
discovered. Even the Brahman theory of life, which seems 
to us to represent the last result, first of ascetic practice, and 
then of abstract contemplation, is something which, as we 
have seen, is held to have been revealed in the first place by 
a Divine Being. The superficial contradiction in this view, 
which has already been criticized, is witness to this general 
standpoint, and makes the religion the more significant. Yet 
while this is a common feature of all religions so far as they 
represent anything more articulated than mere childlike 
imagination, it is peculiarly true of Christianity, the watch- 
word of which is "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.^' 
In Christianity the consciousness of revelation is so absolute 
and pervasive as to determine the whole form of the religion. 
Nay more, the seat and substance of its revelation are found 
in Christ Himself. In Him the completed revelation finds a 
direct personal manifestation which is unique. It is given in 
One who has been worshiped throughout the ages as the 
supreme expression alike of divine and of human perfection. 

225 



226 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Christ, therefore, embodies in Himself not only the content 
of revelation, but its authentication in the perfect satisfaction 
of a religion which is in itself the expression of all the highest 
powers of the Spirit. The contents of the Christian religion 
are in a unique way both something new in the spiritual 
experience of mankind and the fulfillment of the old. The 
limiting conditions of the human spirit are such that, how- 
ever new the religion, it must postulate a certain spiritual 
condition on the part of those who apprehend it; and that 
spiritual condition must be the result of a long evolution 
in a specially favorable environment. Yet while the original 
reception of Christianity depends for its very possibility upon 
such a preparation, it represents a transcendent influence, 
that raises thought and experience of God, alike in Himself 
and in His relation to the world and man, which find their 
unity in Him, to a new plane. It is a fulfillment of the past, 
which contains within itself a reaction against many of the 
religious influences prevalent at the time of Christ, which 
brings about a restoration of spiritual forces that had long 
declined, but which can be explained neither as reaction nor as 
restoration, because in its capacity as the religion of fulfillment 
it marks a living advance into a realm which belongs to it alone. 
Its relation to the past must be glanced at shortly. Meanwhile 
it is necessary only to point to the remarkable evidence which 
it gives alike of the consciousness of a unique revelation 
and of a growth by means of selective processes from narrow 
and limiting conditions to a comprehensive and catholic 
position. 

But if Christianity is a revelation, it is also emphatically an 
experience, that is to say, a state of mind, heart, will, and con- 
science which, however divinely it may be conferred, becomes 
habitual to those who receive it. 

Christianity cannot be interpreted by means of its ab- 
stract theology as embodied in creeds, nor by its ecclesias- 
tical institutions, nor by its practical efforts and observances. 
It represents, above all, a new consciousness of relationship 
to God, and equally a consciousness of new relations 
to God. 

This consciousness is, as has been seen, that of sonship. 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 227 

having in correspondence with it, and as its cause, the appre- 
hension of the Fatherhood of God. The conception of the 
Divine Fatherhood unites in itself the elements of spiritual 
perfection, of self-communication as the principle of the divine 
life, and of a transcendent yet immanent sovereignty, which 
unites law and life under the supremacy of love. This conscious- 
ness of sonship was primary in the perfect God-consciousness of 
Christ. It is secondary, but not the less real, in His followers, 
being dependent in them upon a revelation, a reconciliation, and 
a redemption mediated by Christ. 

I. This experience is, in the first place, the fulfillment of 
the idea and end of religion. It represents the complete 
victory of faith over fear. "Be not afraid, do nothing but 
believe,^' was the exhortation of our Lord. "Perfect love 
casteth out fear'' was the testimony of His follower. In 
the experienced relationship of sonship, while the intrinsic 
conditions of individual life are not only maintained but 
asserted, the sense of kinship with God, of dependence upon 
Him, of obligation, is complete. All these elements are held 
together in perfect balance in a fellowship which is only 
perfectly realized when each one of these separate factors has 
full Justice done to it, alike in conception and in disposition. 
God becomes the supreme object of a personal affection, which 
touches all the powers with a new sense of infinity. Thus the 
Christian religion, in so far as it approaches adequate realiza- 
tion, holds together in organic union and harmony all the 
elements which have been seen to be included in religion. 
Affinity is saved from falling to the extreme of absorption; 
obligation from passing to the extreme of separation. 
Dependence is understood in the light both of kinship 
and of obligation. These two sides are combined in a union 
whichj while safeguarding the worth of the individual, tran- 
scends bare individualism; escaping alike the pantheistic 
mistake of confusing God and man — the negation of person- 
ality in either — and, on the other hand, the abstract separa- 
tion between God and man, whether of naive polytheism, of 
dualism, or of Mohammedanism. God is at once transcen- 
dent and immanent. He is absolutely sovereign, but His 
sovereignty is manifested in and through the universe, 



228 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

especially in and through self-conscious life, and is therefore 
not the contradiction but the condition of liberty. God is 
ideal perfection, yet He manifests Himself progressively in 
and through man, both in his distinction from and in his 
union with nature. The truth which such a religion as that 
of Mohammed seeks to assert is therefore held by Christianity 
in a spirit which makes it friendly, and not hostile, to those 
ideals of independence, freedom, and progress which are 
indispensable to the highest human life. Faith, hope, and 
love become the primary graces in a personal relationship to 
God, which is thus realized as perfectly combining kinship 
with dependence, freedom with the obligation of service. A 
final reconciliation is reached between the spiritual and the 
natural. The distinction between the two, which may be 
pressed too far in a reacton against crude naturalism, is 
maintained. Yet their ultimate union is apprehended on 
condition that the natural, so-called, is seen to be based 
upon and subordinate to the spiritual, and that it is ethically 
C(Hiditioned under the influence of that supreme relationship 
to God which at once distinguishes His sons from nature, 
anl yet makes them the means by which nature is brought 
back from its otherness and alienation and made to serve the 
supreme ends of the divine kingdom. Thus the element of 
truth contained in naturalism is safeguarded in the com- 
pletely Christian view of the world. The universe is, for the 
first time, adequately conceived, when it is regarded and 
treated as being spiritual in its source, its ground, and its end. 
Completed union with God, alike the starting-point and the 
goal of Christian life, is brought about not by the suppression 
but by the perfecting of personal relationships, divine and 
human. The way to it lies in complete self-surrender to the 
divine love, and not in self-exaltation. It is a process of 
being clothed upon, with an ever-increasing fullness and range 
of affection, not of being successively stripped, as in the case 
of Brahmanism, till nothing is left but a naked self. Its 
watchword is "Dying to live,'' but its self-renunciation is not, 
as in Buddhism, the way to self-extinction, but to the perfect 
and intensest blessedness in God, in the confidence that 
blessedness is positive, personal, and eternal, because life is 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 229 

love, and love is the cause of all things. The Christian con- 
sciousness, therefore, has complete confidence in the trustworthi- 
ness of all faculties, in the reality and worth, though with 
different grades of value, of all the interests of life. It has 
learned how to harmonize the ideal and pursuit of holiness with 
the sympathetic recognition of all natural powers and activities. 
It unifies and orders all these under the one regulative and 
inspiring principle of love to God and to man. Attainment 
to this religion is brought about by a complete union and 
interpenetration of revelation, redemption, and satisfaction, 
representing the threefold effect of Christ upon the consciousness 
of the believer. 

Thus Christianity as a living experience presents the 
perfect S3mthesis of all the elements and aspirations which 
have been manifested in various forms and degrees throughout 
all the other religions of the world. It attains this result by 
means of four great principles. Firstly, the assumption of 
the supreme significance of personality. Secondly, the ex- 
planation of the world as due to the self -giving of a supreme 
and infinite personality. Thirdly, the conception of the 
method of that personality as being the setting up of finite 
centers of independent existence within the system of the 
world, in order to the development of mutually related 
personalities, receiving from and responding to the divine. 
Fourthly, the recognition of the underlying unity of the 
whole as a system included in and controlled by God; as 
being, therefore, immanently conditioned by the divine 
character, pursuing in and through all things a spiritual and 
eternal world-end. Such a religious experience gives, as 
nothing else can, a sufficient inspiration to life as an organized 
and evolving whole; can explain and order those aspirations 
of man which, while they have arisen out of his contact 
with the universe around, become so entirely out of touch 
with and superior to that universe as naturalistically 
conceived. 

II. Hence, in the second place, power and satisfaction are 
the marks of this experience as everywhere described by its 
possessors. It is a creation and satisfaction of life, giving to 
it, in the words of the Fourth Gospel, "abundance." And this 



230 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

power and satisfaction are bestowed on condition of realizing 
the true relationship to God; are in proportion to the fullness 
and vigor of the consciousness by which that true relation- 
ship is apprehended. Thus, knowledge, illumination, divine 
wisdom, describe the sense of insight into reality which 
this consciousness produces. "Ye have an unction from the 
Holy One, and ye know all things," says St. John.^ Eecon- 
ciliation, as the finding of true life in free and complete 
self-surrender to the ends of God, represents the bearing 
of the Christian consciousness upon the personality and will. 
Adjustment of life in spiritual mastery of its conditions, this 
is the relationship to the world which is described in St. Paul's 
term ^Tieirship"; including power to face all emergencies, 
the discipline and enrichment of character even through evils, 
which in this respect are recognized as being good. Above 
all, the ever-growing power and vision of hope is wrought 
out through the whole of life as a spiritual preparation, 
carrying its possessors forward with growing energy towards 
the full attainment of an infinite good. The satisfaction 
given is above and beyond the limiting conditions of finite life, 
yet it gives power for all the purposes of that life. Thus by 
means of the filial consciousness which is its most distinctive 
characteristic, it combines in perfect harmony the two ordinarily 
contrasted aspects of religion ; the one which finds in it the pres- 
ent satisfaction arising from union with an infinite and eternal 
good, the other which finds in it a call to pursue a far-distant 
spiritual goal. 

Such is the characteristic consciousness of Christians. It 
rings out for the first time in its fullness under the very 
shadow of the cross, when the deserted Christ declares, "Yet 
I am not alone, the Father is with Me." It utters its 
triumphant anthem by St. Paul when he cries, "All are 
yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." It ex- 
presses its absolute confidence and its infinite expectation in 
the language of St. John: "Behold what manner of love the 
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called 
children of God : and such we are. . . . Beloved, now are we 
children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we 

1 1 John V. 20. 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 231 

shall be. "We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be 
like Him ; for we shall see Him even as He is." 

III. This experience of sonship, with its attendant satisfaction 
and power, is direct and immediate in Christ, but it is mediated 
through Him for all others. 

This is the universal testimon}' of the New Testament, and 
of all typical Christian experience ever since. Historically, 
men have come to apprehend the revelation of the Father, to 
enter into the conscious life of sonship, to receive the ^^Spirit 
of adoption" only in and through their relationship to Christ 
by faith. This historical fact in itself gives to the Person of 
Christ a significance which does not belong to any other religious 
founder. 

The only cases of personal influence in the foundation of 
religion which can for a moment be brought into comparison 
with Christ are those of Mohammed and of the Buddha. Yet 
Mohammed only claims to be a prophet, who has been divinely 
commissioned to proclaun and to enforce the supremely im- 
portant dogma of the unity of God. He stands in no inner 
and vital relation to the truth which he proclaims and enforces. 
So again with the Buddha. The position as the object of 
popular worship into which he has been advanced by no 
means corresponds with that which he claimed for himself 
or which intrinsically belongs to him. This is made clear 
by the report which has been preserved to us of a remarkable 
discourse which he held with Ananda, his beloved disciple. 
"Therefore," he says, "0 Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. 
Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external 
refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast to the 
truth as a refuge. Look not for refuge to any one besides your- 
selves. And how, Ananda, is a brother to be a lamp unto him- 
self, a refuge to himself, betaking himself to no external 
refuge, holding fast to the truth as a lamp, holding fast as 
a refuge to the truth, looking not for refuge to any one besides 
himself? . . . 

"And whosoever, Ananda, either now or after I am dead, 
shall be a lamp unto themselves, and a refuge unto them- 
selves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but 
holding fast to the truth as their lamp, and holding fast as 



232 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

their refuge to the truth, shall look not for refuge to any one 
besides themselves — it is they, Ananda, among the Bhikkhus 
(the members of my society), who shall reach the very topmost 
height — but they must be willing to learn.'^^ 

Such a description of the way of salvation, it is obvious, 
is in the sharpest contrast with that which is presented both 
in the teaching of our Lord and in the experience and teach- 
ing of His apostles and of His followers. So complete is the 
revelation of God in Him, so full the self-bestowment of God 
through Him, so supreme is His personal importance as the 
realized end and the permanent vehicle of the Spirit, that He 
is seen by His followers to be the very principle of self-giving 
in God; the Son who eternally realizes the fellowship of love 
in the Godhead. He goes forth eternally from the Godhead 
into outer manifestation, and returns in the perfect fellow- 
ship of kindred life. In Him, therefore, the possibility, the 
nature, and the spiritual end of creation are all explained. 
In this relationship to God and to the universe are seen to be 
involved the possibility, the nature, and perhaps the necessity 
of the Incarnation. The abstract opposition between creator 
and creature, between spirit and flesh, between God, man, 
and the world, is overcome; transcended in Him whose 
manifestation reveals their essential union in the all-compre- 
hending whole of the divine. Thus the Son, who is the 
bearer of the truth and grace of the Father, is seen to be the 
eternal ground both of humanity and of the universe, 
giving spiritual meaning and consistency to the whole. He 
is the representation and assurance of ideal unity between 
God and man, while, on the other hand, He is the perfect 
creaturely response made in and through the Godhead 
Himself to God. Christ, as the spiritual consumimation of 
the human race, and as giving in and through that con- 
summation the final revelation of God, stands for all this in 
the Christian interpretation of the world. He is for Chris- 
tianity no accidental historical personage. His deification 
in the worship of His Church by no means consists in His 
being gradually invested with miraculous powers and super- 
human dignity, as the result of such myth-xnaking processes 

1 Rhys Davids' Hibbert Lectures, pp. 182, 183. 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 233 

as have gone on elsewhere. Superficial resemblances there 
may be, but they are only superficial. The divinity of 
Christ, together with the consequent doctrine of His relation 
alike to God, to man, and to the worid, is an essential part of 
the whole revelation of God and of His relation to man which 
is contained within the life, teaching, work, and influence of 
Christ. The revelation of God as eternal love, of the principle 
of His life as self-giving, of the world as not an external 
result of His activity, but as receiving its measure of inde- 
pendent existence in order that it may return to the purposes 
and fellowship of God, this is the essential revelation of Chris- 
tianity, and it is bound up with the doctrine of the Triune 
nature of the Godhead and of the Incarnation of the Son in 
Jesus Christ. 

IV. But if this realization of the perfect religion is 
mediated for mankind by the Person and work of Christ, that 
mediation consists not merely of revelation and of self- 
impartation, but also of reconciliation and redemption. The 
work of Christ in the first place brings home to the full the 
consciousness of sin. Wherever religious life of any kind is 
found, there is present the consciousness of evil, not merely 
as the accidental lot of man, but as ethically caused and 
explained. The beginnings of the sense of sin — as trans- 
gression, as failure, and as ruin — are, as has been seen, 
everywhere present, though the form is affected by the main 
principles of each particular religion, and though there are 
many degrees between the optimism of some religions and the 
almost unrelieved pessimism of others. Just as, however, the 
Christian consciousness of God transcends all other religions 
in its spirituality and comprehensiveness, so it determines a 
corresponding completeness and intensity in the experience 
and doctrine of sin. Indeed, it is only in the light of the 
perfect revelation of God and through the growing experience 
of His grace that either the meaning or the gravity of sin can 
be adequately realized. It is only as spiritual influences 
occasion an inward return to God that the misery and guilt 
of alienation from Him can be really felt. The consciousness 
of sin, therefore, so far from affirming a final separation from 
God, witnesses to the beginning of a real return to Him. It 



234 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION- 

reveals an underlying oneness which brings home the misery 
of apartness. The sense of sin brought home in proportion to 
the consciousness of God cannot be explained away. The only 
means of setting aside its testimony is to destroy by a far- 
reaching skepticism the trustworthiness of human conscious- 
ness as a whole. However possible it may be to treat man 
theoretically as an automaton, the theory cannot possibly be 
applied in practice. And only on the ground of its impractic- 
able hypothesis can the reality of the consciousness of sin, 
which is given in and through all consciousness of God, be 
explained away. 

As, therefore, the reality of sin is brought home by the 
revelation of God in Christ, so the meaning of sin is made 
clear. It is the contradiction to the law and spirit of the 
filial, which with all its marks is revealed in Christ as being 
the true principle of life. Hence, as has been said, the 
conveyance through Christ of the consciousness of sonship to 
His followers is by means of reconciliation and redemption. 
Men are brought to realize the new relationship by apprehend- 
ing the divine forgiveness on the one hand, and by making 
an act of acceptance and self-surrender on the other. And this 
reconciliation comes to them through the atonement of Christ 
and the regeneration of His Spirit. 

The apprehension and the doctrine of the atonement of 
Christ are the result of fiye associated causes. In the first 
place, they are due to the sense of that representative 
relationship of Christ to God and to man in union which is 
set forth by the Incarnation. In the second place, to the 
consciousness of sin as being in itself the contradiction of and 
the bar to complete union between God and man, and as 
attended by those infinite consequences which result from 
the violation of the supreme spiritual and moral order of the 
universe. Thirdly, to the actual experience enjoyed by the 
disciples of Christ of a return to God, and of emancipation 
from the condemnation and power of sin, as brought about by 
the personal influence of Christ the Son of God. Fourthly, 
to the completion of the experience of return and emancipa- 
tion by means of the death of Christ. Hence to this completed 
experience of salvation His death is seen to be not accidental, 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 235 

but essential. Fifthly, to the interpretation of the death of 
Christ by means of those sacrificial and sacramental analogies 
which, present in all religions, had been developed with peculiar 
fullness of spiritual and moral meaning in the religious life of 
the Hebrew race. For the student of religion these analogies 
cannot be dismissed as idle superstitions, but must be treated 
as embodying spiritual truths and principles in equal degree 
with any of the other characteristic deliverances of the human 
consciousness. In Hebrew religion the process can be marked 
by which the essential meaning of these analogies is dis- 
entangled from that which is external and eventually 
degrading until the doctrine, or rather the fact, of the 
Atonement, is presented to us with the wealth of spiritual 
meaning which is found in Isaiah liii. There the efficacy of 
vicarious suffering is based upon the spiritual qualities which 
are manifest in it, and upon that relation of spiritual solidarity 
between the suffering prophet and those whose sins he bears 
which cannot be set aside even though they be persecutors 
and he their victim. Hence a perfected doctrine of the 
Atonement was prepared as the last product of the spiritual 
training and discipline which made the people of Israel, and 
especially their representative prophets, the martyr witnesses 
of God to the human race. By means of that doctrine Christ 
Himself interpreted the purpose and meaning of His death. 
Experience of liberation through the death of Christ joined with 
the inheritance of this great spiritual result to create the doctrine 
of Atonement by which expression was given to the way in which 
men reached, through Christ, reconciliation with Grod, and by 
which the death of Christ was explained in its essential relation 
to that result. 

Y. Growing out of the influence of the Person of Christ 
and of His work is, finally, regeneration through the Spirit. 
While this is experienced as a direct act of God, yet the 
awakening of the filial spirit takes place by means of processes 
which have a clear psychological explanation. The truth and 
grace of the new relationship to God offered in Christ are for 
the first time realized, and therefore become dominant over 
thought, affection, and desire. The faith of a final cosmic 
transformation springs out of the experience of regeneration. 



236 ^y THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 



with the evidence of divine grace and of the world-ordering 
supremacy of spirit which it brings. 

VI. Thus, through this experience of Christ is the con- 
sciousness of the new and all-comprehending relationship of 
sonship to God realized. In it is contained the material of 
that abstract doctrine of God as the Father which sets forth 
the intuition and experience that He is love, life, wisdom, 
power, the quickening Spirit, who manifests His glory in the 
ever-fuller bestowment of His own life to a universe which is 
ordered that it may receive and reflect His fullness in attaining 
the ends of His righteousness and love. 

But Christianity, while in a peculiar sense a new religion, 
stands connected with Hebrew religion in a way that is 
unique in the history of religion. Superficially, it is in 
contrast to Hebrew religion, at least in its later development 
as Judaism, and supersedes it; but on looking below the 
surface, it will be seen to supersede only because it fulfills. 
At first sight it is the contrast that is most remarkable. 
Judaism has a highly developed ritual, and its , authoritative 
scriptures were interpreted and hedged about by traditions of 
the scribes and elders; whereas Christianity, in the simplicity 
of its early spirit, represents a spiritual reaction against these 
external and limiting influences. Judaism is a national 
religion, emphasizing at every point the peculiar privileges 
of the people of God; whereas Christianity is catholic and 
missionary. Judaism emphasizes the sovereignty of God, and 
His sovereignty as so conceived stands in the closest relationship 
both to the ceremonialism and to the nationalism of the religion; 
whereas Christianity emphasizes the Fatherhood of God, and this 
emphasis is intimately related both to its spirituality and its 
universalism. 

Yet when we look below the surface the contrast is tran- 
scended; Christianity appears as the religion of fulfillment, 
Hebrew religion as the religion of preparation. Whatever 
may be said of Old Testament religion as elaborated by the 
priest, its highest and most distinctive mark is found, not in 
the work of the priest, but in the influence of the prophet. 
At every highest point of its teaching, one or other — in some 
respects all — of the prophets anticipate the New Testament. 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 237 

Yet the peculiarity of their consciousness is that they feel 
that they are anticipating, that their vision of the truth is a 
vision of something which is not to be fully realized in human 
consciousness and experience till "the latter days." Hence the 
constant formula, "It shall come to pass in that day,^' or "in 
those days." In no respect is this mark of anticipation more 
remarkable than in the foreshadowiag of complete catholicity 
which is found in the noblest teachiag of the Old Testament; 
for example, in Isaiah's prophecy that Egypt, Assyria, and Israel 
shall eventually come into an equal fellowship with Jehovah. ^ 
Even when this vision is not vouchsafed the prophets discern 
a divine intention to bring a measure of blessing to all the 
world through the redemption and exaltation of Israel. Again, 
if the doctrine of the divine sovereignty be studied through- 
out the whole course of its development in Israel, it will be 
seen to represent an aspect of Fatherhood particularly congenial 
to the Hebrew mind, and to tend ever more definitely — as, for 
example, in Isaiah xl-lxvi, and in the later Psahns — ^towards 
a fatherly relationship, embracing alike the nation and the 
faithful individual. 

Thus Old Testament religion represents a unique attainment 
in religion, which is essentially a foreshadowing. It ends, as to 
every one of its interests, in a conscious foretelling of events 
that are outwardly to realize spiritual truths and influences 
already revealed and at work, but which have not yet received 
such complete expression as to bring them universal recognition 
and fulfillment. 

Thus the relation of Old Testament prophetism, with its 
essential characteristic of anticipation, to ^ew Testament 
fulfillment and transformation, forms a connection absolutely 
unique in the history of religion. So dominant is the fact of 
this connection that even the priestly ritual is involved in it, 
and lends itself to spiritualization in terms of fuller experience. 
Witness in this respect the transference of the doctrine of 
atoning sacrifice from the offerings of the temple to the person 
of the Servant of Jehovah in Isaiah liii, which prepares the 
way for the New Testament doctrine of the Atonement of 
Christ. 



1 Isa. xix. 24, 25. 



238 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

This religion of anticipation is recognised to be the result of 
revelation, exhibits a unique process of advance by selection 
under the influence of that revelation, and expresses in its 
doctrine of God and of His relation to the world exactly this fact 
of a progressive revelation of God in the attainment of a world- 
purpose by means and for the sake of character and conduct 
spiritually conditioned. 

(1) In the first place, Hebrew religion, like Christianity, 
is the religion of revelation. As has been seen in the review 
of non-Christian religions, the idea and experience of revela- 
tion is everywhere present, though varying greatly in form 
and adequacy. It is universal and most highly developed 
in the Old Testament; but in no respect is the superiority of 
the Old Testament more clearly marked than in this, that the 
experience of revelation and inspiration is accompanied by the 
lifting of its recipient into the highest and noblest activity of 
all his powers, so that there is complete unity between divine 
revelation and spiritual intuition. When the prophet sees 
with his own truest insight, and proclaims with the largest and 
most courageous manliness, he is conscious of seeing and utter- 
ing what he is receiving in fellowship with his God. Thus, 
there is the remarkable combination of spiritual uplifting with 
mental and moral stability, sanity, and practical sagacity and 
power. Alike in the content and in the consciousness of 
revelation there is a unique continuity between Judaism and 
Christianity. And the continuity is due to the consistency of a 
spiritual evolution. 

(2) Secondly, the advance which takes place throughout 
the history of Old Testament religion is advance by selection. 
Old Testament religion can only be understood under its pre- 
dominant conception of revelation, but that revelation goes 
to work by a sustained process of distinguishing, rejecting, 
antagonizing, and eventually suppressing elements which are 
discovered to be alien from its true spirit. The spirit of the 
nation touches in the course of its history practically every 
tendency which the review of other religions has shown to 
be embodied here or there, and found wanting in final truth 
and serviceableness for mankind. Only one field is un- 
explored, namely, that rejection of the worth of conscious 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 239 

life and of its objects which characterizes Brahmanism and 
Buddhism. Even that standpoint was approached by the author 
of Ecclesiastes. It will probably be for ever a matter of con- 
troversy how far the various alternatives were presented to the 
people in the unfolding religion of Jahvism, and how far they 
were presented to it. But whichever way the matter may be 
decided, each alternative was so presented to the race during its 
spiritual development as to try the spirit, become the source of a 
temptation, and thus call forth the inner power of the religion 
in attaining to the consciousness of its true meaning. There 
may possibly be traces of totem-worship in the Old Testament. 
There are certainly signs of Animism. Nature-worship in all 
its forms, and with that tendency to the sensual which marked 
the neighboring nations, was a constant danger, at least till the 
time of the Babylonian captivity. Barbaric features were again 
and again present, even in the worship of Jehovah as generally 
practiced. But all these were gradually criticized, condemned, 
and expelled. 

And this process of selection was carried out under the 
twofold influence of truth and holiness. A growing aspiration 
after the attainment of truth, not merely of abstract statement 
but of corresponding relationship, and of holiness, as the 
supreme end of human endeavor and the supreme attri- 
bute of the divine character — these were the two influences under 
which the religion was developed. And the pressure which 
applied these two principles was found in the character of 
Jehovah Himself. He was conceived first as the Jealous God^ 
appropriating His people to an exclusive allegiance to Himself, 
which involved at once outward separation from fellowship with 
other nations, and, above all, from adulterous pollution with 
their worship. But eventually the conception of the jealous 
God was transformed and transcended by that of the Holy One 
of Israel, and ultimately even this latter conception was trans- 
figured by such a realization of the graciousness of His holiness 
as is presented in Isaiah xl-lxvi. 

Under these influences Old Testament religion came to 
negate all forms of heathen religion by its positive content. 
It negated Polytheism in all its forms, by its realization 
of the unity of God; Dualism, by realizing His absolute 



240 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

sovereignty. It set aside mere finite and external conceptions of 
Him as it came to recognize more fully His infinity. It rose 
above nature-worship as it discerned His spirituality; above the 
immoral or the non-moral in religion, as it came to understand 
the meaning of His holiness. It set aside the very possibility of 
a conception of blessedness which mutilates manhood and turns 
its back on normal development by its emphasis on personality, 
and on personality as conditioned by and expressed in the social 
relationships of life. 

Hence, positively. Old Testament religion reached its 
doctrine of God as One, supreme and infinite. But His in- 
finity is above all that of spiritual and moral perfection. All 
other attributes of God are perfect in and for this highest per- 
fection, and in the service of its righteous ends. Hence the 
primary manifestation of God is spiritual and ethical. The 
putting forth of His power in nature is in and for the sake of 
securing spiritual and ethical ends. The Old Testament con- 
tains, therefore, an implicit philosophy of the relation of the 
spiritual to the natural, though its emphasis on activity, purpose, 
and personality keeps this relationship from being reflectively 
wrought out. God is for it predominantly, though by no means 
exclusively, transcendent personality rather than immanent 
Spirit and life. Even in this respect, however, the religion from 
time to time becomes anticipatory of that final doctrine of God 
in Christianity, which knows how to interpret the transcendence 
of His personality in such-wise that it carries with it the 
immanence of His Spirit and life. 

(3) With this view of God, Hebrew religion sets forth a 
doctrine of His relationship to the world which reveals the 
efficient cause of this progressive revelation as consisting in 
the gradual attainment of a world-purpose by means of 
character and conduct spiritually conditioned. Emphasis is 
everywhere laid in the Old Testament on personality and 
character. Therefore the main stress is laid on holy purpose 
on the part of God and on holy conduct on the part of man. 
Religion is, above all, historic. History reveals and illustrates 
the nature and the mind of God — not as the object of abstract 
ideas, or even of mystic contemplation— but as the subject of 
righteous purposes progressively wrought out in the exercise 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 241 

of a sovereignty both supreme and universal. The living God 
is revealed in action, creating, choosing, maintaining, and 
using a peculiar people, that they may enter into conscious 
and active fellowship with Himself, in pursuance of His 
spiritual purposes for mankind and for the world. The 
Hebrew race is molded as the divine instrument of this 
world-end through the combined influence of the grace which 
elects it, of the wisdom which trains it, of the power which 
redeems it, and of the righteousness which disciplines and 
corrects it. By these influences, as apprehended by faith, 
it becomes in growing measure a conscious participator in the 
divine purposes; receiving the revelation, attaining to the 
character and obedience, which render such participation 
possible. 

The whole process is governed by the determining factor 
of the Covenant into which Jehovah has entered with His 
people; free and gracious on His part, involving on theirs the 
duty of joyful response, of unswerving loyalty, and of complete 
obedience. This conception of the Covenant snaps the nature- 
tie, that it may emphasize the spiritual conditions, both on 
the divine and human side, upon which so ethical a relationship 
rests. The whole is not an abstract theory, but a description 
of the inner consciousness which accompanies an obvious 
position in the history of the world. To this day it is impossible 
for any one who ascribes supreme worth to religion in itself 
and as a factor in human development, to say other than 
that God chose this people, as He chose no other, for the 
realization of the highest religious life, and for the reception 
of the theological truths which underlie and are expressed in 
such a religion. 

Thus at every step of the development, revelation and history, 
insight and experience, cooperate to bring about fuller realiza- 
tion of the character of God seen as active personality, realizing 
spiritual purposes in the sight of, on behalf of, and in 
His people, by means of His all-controlling power. By these 
means spiritual conditions are created, which, as has already 
been seen, anticipate, but cannot realize their own full and com- 
plete consummation. 

The theological revelation answers exactly to the religious 



242 THi; CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

experience and to the historic position. A religion of steadily 
progressive, yet incomplete, experience and influence is seen to 
be the outcome of an eternal yet gradually unfolding divine 
purpose. Unless the experience growing through the ages be 
meaningless, the interpretation is not only natural but neces- 
sary. Hebrew religion, reduced to an abstract creed or a 
tribal bond, represents but the dry bones where once was a 
living spirit. Of that living spirit this was the characteristic, 
that it knew itself to be the continuous response to a divine 
overture which invited and even summoned this people to be 
the instruments of a purpose, as yet only partially revealed to 
them, and still more partially fulfilled; but which in the end 
was to unfold its full meaning and attain its world-influence 
together. 

No doubt Hebrew religion is deficient in a sense of com- 
plete satisfaction, has imperfect grasp of the divine immanence, 
retains to the end marks of tribal limitation. Its synthesis 
of the world and man in God is incomplete, nor does it fully 
attain to the depth, breadth, and permanence of a complete 
reconciliation with God. Yet it is exactly this combination 
of performance with incompleteness, as expressed in the pro- 
phetic temper, which is essential to the religion. It is the 
existence of this prophetic temper, so vital and meaning so 
much more than mere isolated predictions of events and 
persons, though embracing both, which is so arresting a phe- 
nomenon to those who look upon the universe and upon 
religion from the point of view of evolution. What is pre- 
sented here is not merely the fact of the most striking religious 
evolution, but, accompanying it, the distinctive and ever-present 
consciousness given to this people that its heart and its history 
are the center in which this evolution is taking place. In this 
case the instruments are not blind and unconscious, but 
throughout the process have a unique vision of the end from 
the beginning. The fulfillment, now dimly and now more 
clearly descried, is supplied in Christianity, which assumes 
all the results of Hebrew religion, fulfills and transcends them. 
The whole constitutes a process of vital evolution in the 
highest and deepest realms of life, which, while manifesting a 
clear resemblance to evolutionary processes elsewhere, gives to 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 243 

this history a central position and a revelation of purposiveness 
which are unique. 

And just where this unique centrality and purposiveness 
are found, there the subjects of this great process become,, at 
least in their typical representatives, conscious alike of the 
fact and of its interpretation. The nearer we go to the heart 
of the matter, the more wonderful the fact of prophetism 
becomes, seen as summing up the spiritual life of Israel, as 
anticipating and fulfilled in Christianity, and as bringing into 
the full consciousness of spiritual purpose an unfolding which 
resembles, yet surpasses, that which is universal in all other 
fields of life and being. Thus in the distinctive consciousness 
of Hebrew religion the means of connection is found between 
Christianity as the absolute religion and the religious develop- 
ment of the race. Hebrew religion finds its fulfillment in 
Christianity, while by means of its processes of spiritual selection 
it stands in organic relation to every type of religion which 
it rejects. 

But Christianity stands in relation, not only to the past, 
but also to the future. It is, above all, a missionary religion, 
because of its inherent sense of finality and catholicity. It 
proceeded in the early ages of its history to win and to 
dominate the then known world; though in dominating it, 
it was compelled largely to adapt itself to the world which it 
overcame. At the present time a new world has been opened 
to it, and its representatives are only slowly awaking either 
to the responsibilities which that fact entails, or to an inter- 
pretation of Christianity which is profound enough to meet 
the new spiritual facts which are being disclosed. Those who 
live in the generations immediately to come will witness 
events in the unfolding of catholic religion at least as remark- 
able as those which attended the spread of Christianity 
throughout the Koman Empire. Outsiders will stand and 
watch the event. For those who are not outsiders the clue to 
the future is to be found, not merely in external words of holy 
Scripture, but in the fact that exactly that same sense of 
immanent universality which was vouchsafed both to the 
prophets and to the apostles is equally active and prevalent 
today. The conception of the way in which the final result 



244 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

is to be brought about cannot be more imperfect in some 
respects than was that of the Hebrew prophet. Yet the 
significance of the fact and the preparation for the task is 
not to be found in the power to realize by an adequate imagina- 
tion what is involved in attaining the result. This will be 
made growingly clear by actual experience. "V\Tiat is signifi- 
cant from the standpoint of the evolution of religion is this, 
that in a period bewildered by the complexity of modem life, 
overwhelmed by the mass of new knowledge in every depart- 
ment of life, and realizing the demand for a far-reaching 
readjustment of thought, the sense of immanent catholicity, 
the determination to realize it, and the power to conform the 
conception and statement of Christianity to its enlarged task, 
remain unaltered. In short, the immanent prophetism of 
Christianity remains in the twentieth century what it was in 
the first. Hitherto, these prophetic indications have not 
failed to reveal the purposes of God, the results of evolution. 
Doubtless the missionary efforts of Christianity have involved, 
as has been said, an adaptation to the varying conditions of 
thought and life, which, though they have in some respects 
revealed the power of Christianity, have in others proved its 
danger. The whole development of historic Christianity, 
while the most moving of spectacles, rouses at once wonder in 
presence of the unfolding of new forms and applications of the 
Christian idea, and disappointment because of the limitations, 
the perversions, and the corruptions which have attended the 
process. Admixture with alien elements, inadequate realiza- 
tion of its own permanent content, the changing selection and 
consequent exaggeration of special principles involved in it, 
have all played their part here or there, now or then, in the 
history of Christianity. It is a mistake, however, to concen- 
trate the mind entirely either upon the naturalness of the 
result or upon the contradiction of principles here or there 
involved. Perhaps there has been no embodiment of 
Christianity so unworthy as not to contain within itself a 
witness to some indispensable element of Christian truth or 
principle of Christian life. A large philosophy will fasten 
upon that which is positive in each one of these, and seek to 
correct by its means that which is negative or even corrupt. 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 245 

In illustration of this position it may be permitted to the 
author to quote from what he has written elsewhere on the 
Fatherhood of God. *^The truth of the matter is, that the 
types of spiritual apprehension which have characterized 
stages of religious history or sections of the Christian com- 
munity, do specially realize some real aspects of the Fatherhood 
of God, and do respond to them, although such apprehension 
and response in various degrees fall short of the breadth and 
length and depth and height, and therefore, by reason of 
incompleteness, tend to one-sided exaggerations. The one- 
sided limitations of men mean more than a defect which 
leaves all else unaffected. They involve the positive develop- 
ment into a specialized and peculiar individuality of that 
which is present and active. Such characteristic peculiarities 
of temperament, accentuated by historic epoch and spiritual 
environment, mean a special sensitization in some directions, 
and the lack of it in others. They involve, therefore, a 
peculiar power to apprehend and to respond to certain aspects 
included in the Fatherhood of God, and the inability to appre- 
hend and respond to certain others equally present in the 
complete reality. 

"But it is not sufficient to point out that human defects 
involve a positive and distinctive determination of human 
character and of its spiritual apprehension, and that that 
distinctive peculiarity makes men sensitive to particular 
aspects of the divine Fatherhood. It must further be urged 
that God ordains that it should be so, and that His own 
manifestation of Himself is determined in order to satisfy 
the particular spiritual condition of those to whom it is 
made, in order to enable them to fill their place and dis- 
charge their office in the gradual evolution of the world's life. 
And it must further be admitted that general advance may, 
at least sometimes, only be purchased by particular retro- 
gressions. This is involved in the vital process of the world, 
and the revelation of God to and in men conforms itself to 
this fact. The defects, for example, in Augustine's theology, 
from the standpoint of a complete rendering into thought 
and life of the truth, as truth is in Jesus, were the conditions 
under which alone could a living and effective message from 



246 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

God go forth to Roman and mediaeval life, taking 
into account their inherent and inevitable imperfections. 
And substantially the doctrine set forth — despite exaggeration 
and shortcoming — does declare something which is per- 
manently true of the divine Fatherhood and vitally part 
of it. 

"The same explanation holds good in the classic example of 
Puritanism, with its one-sided insistence on the sovereignty of 
God, accompanied by a virility of purpose and action which 
wrought out our modern liberties. 

*^And what is true of stages in the world's development is 
equally true of survivals and reactions. In the case of true 
and faithful men, limited by their own individuality, and not 
sinning against light, these represent a fatherly accommoda- 
tion on the part of God in manifesting to men such aspects of 
His Fatherhood as they are capable of apprehending and 
responding to."^ 

Sufficient has been said of the relations of Christianity to 
other religions. The results of the discussion may be summed 
up as follows: — 

1. Christianity consunmiates the central evolution of 
religion. 

2. In doing so it raises religion itself to a higher plane. 

3. It effects this by means of the consciousness of a filial 
relationship to God, which unifies alike in thought and 
conduct all the elements and interests of life in an organic 
whole. 

' 4. While supplying standards of criticism, by which all 
other religions may be tried, it finds room in itself for 
that which is most deeply spiritual and most broadly human in 
each. 

5. It inspires by an inner prophetic consciousness a continuous 
spiritual advance; this advance being secured in part by living 
criticism, in the light of its original, of occasional departures 
from its intrinsic meaning and end. 

6. It touches and satisfies with a sense of divinity and infinity, 
unknown elsewhere, all the highest and noblest emotions, desires, 
purposes, and principles of life. 

1 The Fatherhood of God in Christian Truth and Life, pp. 324-6. 



CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILLMENT OF RELIGION 247 

This is to say, that Christianity, judged from the standpoint 
of evolution, is the fittest to survive, the only religion which con- 
tains the possibility of becoming universal, and which exhibits 
its distinctive marks, not in bare contradiction of all other 
religions, but because it includes in a perfect whole all which 
is capable of becoming universal and permanent in each. 



BOOK III 

THE PROOF OF THE CHRISTIAN 
RELIGION 



CHAPTER I 

TEE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 

CHKISTIANITY, according to the view which has been 
taken in these pages, is above all a specific conscious- 
ness of certain relations to God, and of the means by 
which those relations are realized. It is propagated by tradition, 
involving both instruction and preaching; but so long as it re- 
mains merely, or even primarily, a theoretic creed, it does not in 
the true sense exist. It is as an experience, a temper and attitude 
of the spirit, that Christianity becomes real in any particular 
case; and it is by the reception of that experience, and by its 
effect in completing, unifying, explaining, and inspiring life, 
that it has its verification for those who accept it. The question 
of its proof becomes, therefore, the discovery of the inmanent 
grounds of this subjective verification in each particular case, 
and of the extent to which and the way in which these grounds 
have universal validity. 

It is important at the outset thoroughly to apprehend 
that Christianity is thus experimental, and to understand 
the relation of the Christian experience to the sum-total 
of the experience of conscious life. The New Testament 
everywhere takes the experimental view of that wherein 
Christianity consists. It is treated variously as a revela- 
tion to the spiritual faculties, as an illumination of those 
faculties, as a consequent intuition; as a birth into a higher 
world, which alone has reality, calls forth and satisfies the 
highest capacities of the spiritual nature. This experience, 
however, which appeals to and quickens the highest spiritual 
faculties, comes to take a working place, nay, the highest place, 
in the practical consciousness of life, and is developed to its 

251 



252 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

maturity by the manifold activities of ordinary life in the 
world. It is therefore represented as an uplifting of human 
nature to a higher level, and as an enlargement of its powers 
and aims; but as an uplifting and enlargement which is yet 
a fulfillment of all that human nature implicitly is. Thus the 
essential conception of Christianity is not that it is an alterna- 
tive to the natural life, still less an artificial departure from 
it or opposition to it. It includes the natural life in all its 
normal interests, and is indeed so immanent in the whole of 
it, that entirely to destroy the Christian content implicit in all 
human life is to destroy the very possibility of natural life 
itself. The claim of the Christian consciousness is that what- 
ever gives positive content to life in all its ranges is an 
essential part of it; that attempted escape from its essential 
principles and attitude involves self-mutilation and eventu- 
ally self-destruction. The sense of wholeness is therefore char- 
acteristic of the Christian consciousness, wherever it is completely 
realized. 

The man who receives it in its fullness is conscious 
of being brought to the wholeness of his manhood, to the satis- 
faction of his whole need, and to a complete interpretation of 
the whole of life. Wherever any true and positive principle, 
whether of thought or of practice, is found, he recognizes 
something which is inherent in the Christian consciousness. 
Broken off from that consciousness it becomes to him an 
abstraction; true, it may be, in itself, but needing for its full 
understanding to be seen as part of the all-embracing whole. 
As detached from that whole and made abstract, any such 
principle lends itself to exaggeration, tending to a distorted 
view of the nature of reality, and to the negation of some 
other principle, which may be at least equally real and 
important. The Christian consciousness, therefore, seeks 
to make explicit that which completes the content, meets 
the need, and promotes the harmonious fullness of human 
life. 

The first and most vital questions are, what is the con- 
tent of the Christian consciousness, whether it really 
is thus comprehensive, and how it works. The question of 
origin is secondary. Consciousness in general must be 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 253 

treated in the first place as an entity, and not as a result. 
The main question about it should be as to what is 
contained in it. From this standpoint the Christian con- 
sciousness has a primary claim to be considered equally 
trustworthy as any other kind of consciousness. It has 
appeared in the highest sense natural to those who receive it, 
has been steadily persistent and mightily effective in human 
history; especially in its influence upon the character which 
lies at the back of actions. It is bound up with and becomes 
part of the whole activity by which its predecessors play their 
part in the world. At the lowest, it is the most remarkable 
result of the action of the universe on man and of man's 
reaction upon the universe. The fact that it has only gradu- 
ally grown to its present position in no way discredits it in a 
world to which evolution is the key, especially if it can be 
shown that it is the complete development of potentialities 
implicit in all healthy human life. Its power of world-wide 
advance affords a presumption that this is the case. If it can 
be shown that it does indeed include, harmonize, and explain 
all the interests of such healthy and normal life, then its 
claim to general trustworthiness will take rank with that 
of the general trustworthiness of human consciousness as a 
whole; neither more nor less. Particular skepticism as to 
that which is essential in the Christian spirit will then be 
bound up with general skepticism as to the trustworthiness of 
human consciousness as a whole. Such general skepticism 
cannot, of course, be thorough-going. All skepticism has a 
subjective way of choosing some arbitrary standpoint of 
trustworthiness and of faith. The ordinary life of perception, 
that of practical interests, and that of scientific pursuits, all have 
their special standpoints in this regard. The critical question 
is how far the special standpoint of any one or of all these covers 
the whole ground or supplies a complete standard of reasonable 
certitude. 

Our review of the relation of the Christian consciousness 
to other religions has demonstrated its serviceableness. How 
can the advance be made from its serviceableness to its truth? 
Four conditions must be fulfilled. First, it must be shown 
to be indispensable to the full realization of human life, to be 



254 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the end which so completely unfolds the immanent idea of the 
whole as to be its only explanation. 

Secondly, as for this reason completing all other elements of 
human life, which implicitly assimie it. 

Thirdly, as offering the only complete and consistent explana- 
tion of the universe, and containing principles for the explanation 
of every part. 

Fourthly, as able to look apparent contradictions in the face, 
either explaining them away or subordinating them. 

The present chapter will deal with the first two of these condi- 
tions, and touch upon the third. The complete treatment of the 
third and fourth must be reserved for a later stage of the 
discussion.^ 

I. The primary argument in support of Christianity is that 
it is true because it is indispensable to the full realization of 
the noblest human life. It is necessary to commence with some 
consideration of the formal nature and meaning of this argu- 
ment. It may be premised that three things are involved in 
the general form of it. First of all, that that which is distinctive 
of the Christian consciousness — the filial relationship to God 
in Christ — is essential to the complete satisfaction of what man 
essentially is, and therefore seeks to become. Secondly, that 
because of this, Christianity alone gives rationality to the 
world, when man with all his characteristic aims and activities 
is included. Thirdly, that that which alone gives satisfaction 
to the highest aspirations of man, and rationality to the 
world in which man is included, is thereby evidenced 
as real. 

1. Thus, the proof of the truth of Christianity, as it claims 
to be a revelation of divine truth to the spiritual faculties of 
man, manifested in and through religious experience, turns 
upon the nature of what have been of late termed "judgments 
of value,^' and their worth as evidence of reality. The term 
^'judgments of value" has been adopted from Lotze by the 
Ritschlian school of theology, and has now acquired currency 
in general theological thought. Broadly speaking, by a 
religious judgment of value is meant that some belief — 
whether it be a conception of the reality underlying spiritual 

* See Book III., chaps, iii and iv. 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 255 

experience and manifest in it, or a standard or principle of action 
— is essential to the well-being and complete satisfaction of 
human nature; in short, that life, as man is constrained to seek 
to realize it, is not completely possible unless such conceptions 
and principles are assumed to be real. 

In form, the insistence of Eitschl and his school upon the 
importance of such judgments of value in the proof of the 
Christian religion is a revolt against the primacy and 
sufficiency of all purely intellectual explanation of the nature 
and meaning of the universe. The form of the argument 
depends upon the contention that man is not merely or even 
primarily intellectual, but that the explanation of his nature 
is to be found in his will, in the immanent necessity that he 
should realize the meaning and possibilities of his nature by 
means of action in pursuit of satisfying ends. Eitschl, as has 
been seen, exaggerated the distinction between the theoretic 
and the practical faculties in man until they often appear to 
be in opposition, and as the result of this apparent opposition 
he drew an absolute contrast between religious explanation 
and world-explanation, though with considerable vacillation 
at different stages of his life and in different parts of his 
writings. What appears essential in the emphasis laid upon 
"judgments of value," as distinguished from what is called 
theoretic world-explanation, is, that no world-explanation 
can be satisfactory if the peculiar content of human con- 
sciousness as unfolded in the pursuit of satisfying ends, and, 
above all, of the Christian consciousness as the most remark- 
able case of this kind, has been left out of account. All 
world-explanation must fail in completeness which selects 
mechanic, biologic, or even abstractly ideal principles of 
explanation to the exclusion of the principles which are 
furnished in the concrete content of spiritual, above all of 
Christian, consciousness itself. Man manifests his nature in 
the fulfillment of relations and in the pursuit of ends. To 
understand him these relations and ends must be explored 
and set forth. To select principles of explanation which are 
found everywhere else, save in that which is distinctive of 
human consciousness as such, is to leave a great part of the 
world out of account, and that the most important, if not 



256 THE CHRISTIAN KELIGION 

because of its intrinsic value, at least, because it is the distinctive 
mark of the only being who either is competent or desires to 
inquire as to the meaning of the world. So relative to the 
inquirer is the world about which he inquires that he finds all 
the principles by which he explains it out of his own con- 
sciousness as standing in vital relationship to its complex 
system. All his explanations are essentially anthropomorphic, 
for he cannot get outside himself to contemplate the bare pos- 
sibility of a world as it would exist if his real or possible con- 
sciousness were left out of account. Therefore all that is 
presented in consciousness as the result of man's contact with 
the world must be explored and have due weight given to it 
in order to any statement which can justly pretend to be a 
final or complete explanation of reality. To rule out anything 
which is distinctive of human consciousness and experience, 
above all, to rule out that which is most distinctive of 
both, is to prepare a result which falls short of complete 
rationality just in so far as it fails to represent complete human 
experience. 

Such may, perhaps, be laid down as the legitimate claim 
of judgments of value as a primary guide to reality, and as 
entitled to weigh against any supposed explanation that is 
founded upon principles lower or more partial than those 
which are supplied by the complete content of spiritual con- 
sciousness. The enforcement of judgments of value as a 
guide to truth should mean, first, that the standards of value 
and the strivings of the noblest life contain within themselves 
an inner justification which can be made explicit, and has 
direct importance as revealing the meaning of the world. 
Spiritual life, as it has manifested itself in all its nobler forms, 
whether heroic or saintly, has become apparently independent 
of, and frequently even opposed to, mere biologic interest. 
Even if such interest should turn out to be unconsciously 
served over the whole range of human life by its be- 
ing ignored or even sacrificed by the hero or saint, at least such 
men have pursued their life in complete independence and 
ignorance of such remote biologic considerations. Again, 
much that has become indispensable to the highest human 
life as ordinarily lived is the despair of the mere biologic 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 257 

inquirer, as having no connection whatever with efficiency in 
the mere struggle for animal existence. The man who is 
determined to find the whole explanation of human life in 
such biologic interests calmly dismisses large portions of the 
content, whether of noble or of refined human consciousness, 
as inoperative by-play. Such an attitude reveals a pre- 
sumption which the scientific inquirer is the first to denounce 
when it is displayed by those who ignore physical elements 
of explanation in the supposed interests of religion or 
theology. 

Life as manifested from its faintest beginnings to the highest 
forms of human consciousness exhibits distinct planes or 
stages, the highest of which has ideals and pursuits, which 
are not self-regarding, nor in the physical sense of the word 
life-regarding. To the man who regards the matter from the 
biologic standpoint, all such departures are, so far as the 
universe is concerned, irrational, while as present in the indi- 
vidual they are more or less insane. If this obvious conclusion 
is to be avoided, it can only be by juggling with facts and 
confusing phenomena in a way which the plain man feels to 
be entirely unconvincing. If the attempt to prolong life be 
the one rational motive, what of the heroic sacrifice of life? 
To bring this under biologic rule the only course open is to 
appeal to powers of altruistic imagination and sympathy, which 
by the very fact that they are thus called in, are shown to be, 
at least in select cases, mightier and more real than the biologic 
interests which they overrule. The contention of those who 
plead for the place of judgments of value in the explanation of 
the world, is that the principles and acts of the highest living 
must not be confused, reduced to inferior terms, or treated as 
unimportant for the discovery of truth, but that they carry an 
immanent justification in themselves which it is the business of 
the spiritual inquirer to make explicit, and to insist upon as 
essential to the explanation of human nature and of the world 
to which it belongs. 

The affections of life demand similar treatment, revealing 
their spiritual basis and inspiration, and showing their justifi- 
cation. Eitschl opposed the will to the intellect; the kingdom 
of ends to the world of theoretic ideas. He practically ignored 



258 T^E CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

'i 

what is still more vital tp human life than either of these, 
the realm of affections which respond to the spiritual relation- 
ships of life. Here the same feature which has manifested 
itself in human action is again apparent. The more com- 
pletely the human affections are developed, the more completely 
do they throw off the merely animal and utilitarian interests 
in which they had their first manifestation. Born and 
realized in the lower, they gain with every step of human 
progress an independence which gives to them a spirituality 
and infinity of their own. Life varies as relatedness, and the 
worth of relationships is eventually determined by the wealth 
of disinterested spiritual affection. The realization of love 
and of life come together; and in that realization the sense 
of relatedness within the finite, and that of relatedness to 
the infinite, act and react upon one another. The fullness of 
human love tends to expand until it leaves the finite behind, 
and seeks infinite and eternal satisfaction in the divine. 
Such religious satisfaction, on the other hand, brings its 
possessor back again into the finite relationships of human 
life with a wealth of spiritual and disinterested affection un- 
known before. The love which has thus found its satisfaction 
in God is felt to be permanent, and to carry with it the perma- 
nence of the life which is capable of such love. The significance 
of this fact also must be taken into account as one of the most 
characteristic judgments of value to be found in the life of man- 
kind ; essential, therefore, to any complete explanation of the 
nature of man. 

Hence, finally, the enforcement of judgments of value as 
a guide to reality should mean the drawing out intellectually 
of the principles involved in spiritual life as it seeks the 
highest ends, and in love as realizing the full meaning of the 
relationships into which it enters, and finding its own full 
meaning in them. Before entering upon the general subject 
of world-explanation, in short, it is necessary to lay bare 
the principles contained in human nature in its highest and 
fullest development. The cogency of such a proof rests upon 
one initial assumption: the affirmation of the reality and 
worth of human consciousness in itself, and in its fullest 
range. It is in this relation that the assertion that the 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 259 

Christian religion is incapable of proof has whatever force may 
legitimately be accorded to it. It applies not to the proof of 
this particular fact or the other connected with the Christian 
faith as historically revealed, but to the whole attitude of 
certitude as to the contents of spiritual experience. And in this 
respect the Christian faith only occupies the same position as 
that of any other deliverance of human consciousness, except in 
so far as its principles are more momentous, and its realization 
not so universal as is the case with the everyday content of 
ordinary consciousness. The latter fact needs accounting for, 
but if the difficulty involved in it be removed, then its affirma- 
tions come to rank side by side with any other affirmations- 
which depend upon the trustworthiness of human consciousness. 
Hence it is necessary to seek a careful and comparative exposi- 
tion of the contents of the Christian experience, and a proof of 
the catholicity of that experience, not merely in the sense that 
it is capable of reproduction universally, but also in that its 
essential features are present in all positive human life, and 
become manifest in proportion as that life attains the fullness 
of its immanent end. 

To sum up, therefore, the principle involved in the use of 
judgments of value as a means of arriving at truth is, that that 
which alone satisfies and justifies the aspirations and affections 
of the highest human life, unifying, ordering, harmonizing, and 
inspiring all the ends of life in a complete whole, is thereby 
evidenced as the revelation in and through human consciousness 
of underlying reality. 

2. If this be so, the contents of such spiritual experience 
contain the highest evidence of the existence and nature of 
God. The reason that these judgments of value are indis- 
pensable to man is that they have their ground in the eternal 
source of man's being. In his judgments of value man 
manifests, so to speak, the structure and ends of his spirit; 
that which he intuitively realizes as setting forth the mean- 
ing, and indispensable to the satisfaction of his personality. 
When men come to read their own lives in terms of an 
underlying and immanent purpose, to realize in a growingly 
spiritual way their dependence, and when under both influ- 
ences there grows up within them; an aspiration after the 



260 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION^ 

spiritual, the infinite, and the eternal as the ground and end 
of their being, this state of consciousness is at once distinctive 
of the most highly developed manhood, and gives expression 
to what has been implicit in religious consciousness from the 
first. Furthermore, this state of consciousness becomes in the 
highest degree vital and influential. Only in its light 
can its possessor understand himself in his relation to the whole 
of life. Those who either are without the consciousness or 
doubt the validity of its testimony treat the problem 
as insoluble. It is contended that this most peculiar and in- 
fluential testimony of the human spirit, which represents the 
satisfaction of the most urgent and lasting strivings of man- 
kind, can be interpreted only as containing within itself the 
revelation of the divine reality in which men "live and move 
and have their being.'' The fact that such judgments 
are essential to the full and normal realization of man's 
personality in all its meaning is evidence that they unfold 
its inmost secret. Hence, they are the finite manifestations 
of the infinite source of human nature. The statement that 
"man makes the gods in his own image" is true. That he 
does so is not a reason for considering the result valueless, 
but the very contrary. It is an assurance that the creation 
of his spiritual intuition and imagination contains the truth, 
provided that the presence and influence of the ideal and 
infinite has due effect, and that the result is in the line of 
the normal development of human consciousness as evidenced 
by historic progress. That which is normal is for this 
purpose determined by its being potentially universal, and 
in harmony with the complete conditions and needs of human 
well-being as they are evolved in the actual world. On 
consideration, it seems absurd to refuse to human personality 
— its faculties, aspirations, and relationships — a predominant 
share in the unfolding of divine reality. Yet that share 
cannot be accorded to it, when it, the highest and most 
distinctive reality in the world, is reduced to the lower terms of 
inferior existence by the elimination of that which is peculiar 
to itself. 

To accord to human nature, as disclosed in the charac- 
teristic deliverances of spiritual consciousness, the highest 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 261 

place in determining the nature of divine reality, is the onl}^ 
rational course, for the following reasons. First of all, because 
human nature exhibits powers and needs which, upon any 
supposition, issue from that reality. Secondly, because it 
contains within itself the only source alike of the need and 
the power of world-explanation, however limited that expla- 
nation may be. Everywhere it imposes its own forms or 
categories upon the world that is to be explained; except 
in the structure of human consciousness, there is no means 
either of the perception or of the explanation of a related 
world at all. And, thirdly, because human consciousness, 
occupying this position, has made the characteristic claim to 
have experienced a divine revelation to which it yields a 
spiritual response. 

Of such essential importance is the content of human 
consciousness to the explanation of reality, that those who, 
theoretically, deny its validity, habitually slip into its use. 
The universal skeptic, for example, affirms the principle 
of certitude and the worth of human consciousness, at least, 
in the act of proclaiming and justifying his own skepticism; 
his faith at least in his own doubt, in the reality of himself 
as doubter, and in the rationality of his doubt. So again 
the bare naturalist is constrained to call in from his 
own consciousness not only the perception of connection between 
phenomena, which he investigates^ and beyond that the 
conception of effectiveness and of interaction, based upon 
his own consciousness of will-power, but also the concept 
of purpose, modeled upon his own deliberate action in 
securing ends. The words **law,^^ "selection," "agency," 
"end," are all essential in his vocabulary, and can never be 
entirely stripped of their association with the purposive activity 
of man. However often they may be purged by the thought 
which revolts against anthropomorphism, the residuum to 
which the scientific inquirer limits himself never becomes 
free from its subjective source. Fully to realize this fact 
is to perceive how baseless is the assumption that the way 
to reach objective reality is to attempt the impossible course 
of getting clear of that subjectivity which is not only present 
in all that we say or do, but which, upon any rational 



262 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

supposition, is equally a part of reality with that which it seeks 
to explain. 

Man is the only creature within our knowledge to whom 
there is a nature, relative to his consciousness, and presented 
as a whole, ordered by reason. Man, therefore, cannot be 
dismissed by his own thought, as being either a by-product, 
or subordinate in the whole scheme of existence, or as undis- 
tinguished from the whole. And man adds to all else that 
distinguishes him the consciousness that a revelation of God 
is made to him, in him, and through him. The testimony 
of religion, which has been seen in our previous inquiry 
to be natural and necessary, and to advance by ordered 
growth to its perfection in Christianify, cannot be dismissed 
from consideration. Man, by the very fact that the whole 
of nature presents itself to him, is thereby shown to be 
at once part of nature and above it. He is distinguished 
from it exactly by the union within himself of the correla- 
tives, self-consciousness and world-consciousness. He affirms, in 
addition, God-consciousness, as transcending and unifying the 
other two. 

Herein is to be found the rationale of revelation. Monism 
affirms the identity of the whole world, including man and 
any other higher intelligences, with God. But in the whole, 
which is thus identified with God, a principle of distinction 
in unity appears in the fact of self-consciousness, and this 
principle of distinction cannot be explained away. To say 
barely that God is the whole of things when self-distinguishing 
consciousness has been practically negated or thrown into 
the background, is to unify by ignoring this primary fact 
in the situation as it is revealed to consciousness. Unity 
can only be secured and explained on the basis of 
this primary fact. On this basis it must do justice to 
three things. Firstly, to the sense of dependence on a kindred 
and superior, yet immanent source. Secondly, to the pres- 
ence of a hierarchy of ends in the universe, the higher 
of which rightfully command the subordination of the lower. 
Thirdly, to the position given in consciousness that nature, 
as such, exists for spirit — for the human spirit, and therefore 
— since the human spirit proceeds from, and has its being 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 263 

in God — for God as Spirit. Thus the immanence of God is 
manifest in human consciousness, firstly in the testimony 
of that consciousness to the fact and nature of its dependence; 
secondly, in the unfolding of rational principles, which, in 
proportion as they fulfill the meaning of human nature, are 
realized to have divine significance; and thirdly, in the 
consciousness of revelation, breaking down the apartness of 
man and making hiai the instrument of God, by unfolding 
within his consciousness his divine origin, meaning, and 
purpose. 

Hence men carry the idea of God within them in varying 
degrees of fullness, according to their spiritual development. 
They naturally use that idea for the purpose of world- 
explanation, whether as philosophers or as men of common 
sense. They lose it in whole, or in part, when they make 
the unnatural attempt to look outside their own conscious- 
ness, or that of their fellows, for its full evidences in a world 
from which they themselves have been subtracted. They 
thus throw out the consciousness of God from the concept 
of humanity, and then contend that a miracle is necessary 
to bring it back. According as they believe or disbelieve 
in the possibility of that miracle, does the fact of revelation 
stand or fall with them. Admit the full significance of 
human personality in the world, and its historic consciousness 
of personal relations with the Divine, and then revelation 
becomes in the highest sense natural, being due to that inter- 
penetration of the divine and of the human which is the direct 
consequence of the spiritual nature of man and of its grounding 
in a universe which, because man is spiritual, must be ultimately 
spiritual also. 

The recognition of the universal spiritual conditions of 
revelation is not incompatible with the further recognition 
of varying degrees in revelation. A measure of truth may 
be conceded to the deliverances of the religious consciousness 
even in their lowliest forms without denying the unique 
glory and significance of Christianity, and of the spiritual 
preparation which made Christianity possible. Such dif- 
ferences of degree are determined by two factors. In the 
first place by the method by which the divine purpose is 



264 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

carried out. The laws of revelation are similar to the laws 
of evolution elsewhere. However the matter may be ex- 
plained, different measures of divine self-giving become 
manifest in different degrees of spiritual enlightenment and 
fulfillment. In the second place, these differences are accounted 
for by the measure and nature of the human response. The 
variations in this respect which are apparent in the higher 
spiritual history of mankind are again foreshadowed through- 
out all the lower ranges of life and progress. It is true that 
in such lower ranges, as might be expected, the peculiar 
spiritual and moral problems which are present in the case 
of revelation do not arise. Yet it is possible to find cases 
where, under the pressure of external influences, animals have 
so completely altered, and indeed degraded their modes of life, 
that the change has involved a desertion of the normal 
faculties with which hitherto they have been equipped until 
by disuse the very power of those faculties has been lost.^ 
It would be a strange thing if such phenomena happened 
in the lower world, where character is present only in its 
most rudimentary and non-moral forms, and did not become 
still more strongly apparent in those higher realms of being 
where deliberate moral choice has constantly to be made, and 
where, in addition to all other stress of life, comes the still 
more searching temptation to be disobedient to a heavenly 
vision. The difficulty of differences in degree, however strik- 
ing, between revelation and religion in their lowest and 
highest forms respectively, is simply an outstanding case of 
the difficulty of bringing together, in human imagination, the 
constantly exercised volition of a self-conscious Divine Beiug 
with ordered law and method in the world which owes its 
origin to Him. The further difficulty is involved of 
the combination of divine sovereignty both transcendent and 
immanent on the one hand, with the delegation to the 
creature of that measure of independence which is 
involved in individuality, whether in its lowest or in its 
highest forms. The difficulty of combining these various 



1 The mole, with its visual apparatus complete, yet atrophied by disuse, due 
to a change of habits, which was adopted probably in order to escape its enemies, 
is a case in point. 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 265 

elements, however, does not entitle us to negate any one of 
them. 

3. The next position which must be laid down is, that that 
which is authenticated to man as being true by reason of its 
being essential to his highest and most rational life, is thereby 
furnished as the key to the explanation of the world. The 
supposed opposition between the highest subjective truth 
for man and the truth in respect to nature, considered as 
such, does not exist. The cosmos can only be understood as 
an ordered system relative to, and having its unity in, 
consciousness. Empirically the world exists for the im- 
mediate consciousness of the individual, and for his memory 
of the various ways in which it has existed for him in direct 
consciousness throughout his past. Its objectivity is estab- 
lished for him when it is found to exist similarly for the 
consciousness of his fellow men, and to be the means by 
which he affects that consciousness. That natural discovery 
enables him, from the first, to add the results of consciousness 
in the history of his fellows to its results in his own. And 
thus the great body of knowledge of the world is built up. 
In addition, however, to the objectivity of the world, is man's 
perception, developing with every stage of its progress, of 
its unity and coherence. This discovery of its unity and 
coherence is made as man finds alike that the world becomes 
subservient to his purposes, and, on the other hand, by an 
equally real experience that it opposes them. It comes, 
eventually, to represent a consistent whole, now falling into 
line with what he desires, and again resisting him. Thus 
nature exhibits phenomena of ordered regularity. As regu- 
larity in his own life means will, expressed in law, so man 
comes to understand it in the case of nature as his mind 
becomes capable of the conception. Lastly, he perceives that 
the regularity outside him which prevails over him whenever 
he attempts to thwart it, is a regularity in pursuit of ends; 
whether on a cosmic scale, or in the limited forms which 
have supplied the material for the argument for design in 
nature. Just as he understood the regularity of nature in 
the light of his own law-giving, so man only understands the 
unfolding of ends in nature, either generally or in regard to 



266 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

special phenomena, in the light of his own purposive 
activity. Thus, from first to last, nature is relative to man's 
thought. He knows it only as it is present to conscious- 
ness, and as it is interpreted by the forms of his own self- 
conscious life. To abandon these forms at any point, while 
it is a confession of his own incapacity, reduces nature also 
either to a meaningless enigma or to chaos. Moreover, 
though man learns the coherence of law in nature because, 
while it generally harmonizes with the fixed conditions of 
his own life, from time to time it proves too strong for his 
desires, yet in the larger education of which he is the subject, 
it is seen, even in the latter case, to be, on the whole, sub- 
servient to his interests. Its order, in a sense even its 
heedlessness of him and its opposition — sometimes effectually 
barring his way, and at others only yielding to his utmost 
efforts of will and of wisdom — all are seen in historical 
retrospect to be a friendly hostility. His higher life has 
only been developed under the continuous pressure of 
physical necessity. In addition, the opposition of nature 
and its unsatisfying materiality have been the means of de- 
veloping the social instincts and relationships of mankind. 
They have driven men to find permanent satisfaction in a 
higher and ideal world, by means of which the world of natural 
existence has been reshaped, until it has become a 
more suitable home for the noble and enlarged life which they 
have come to live. Nature therefore has, by the very fact 
that it has opposed man, stimulated his social, ideal, and 
spiritual interests, and evoking these, while strengthening 
his character in the struggle of life, has made him the 
creative and transforming power which the history of civiliza- 
tion shows him to have been. Thus, the triumphant assur- 
ance, '^all things work together for good," which is the highest 
faith attained by the saint, is the testimony borne by the history 
of civilization taken as a whole. So much is this the case, that 
within certain limits man has attained to a higher development 
where nature has presented to him the most difficult 
problems and tasks than where she has easily yielded to his 
slightest requests. 

And not only is nature relative to man's consciousness 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 267 

and subservient to his purposes, but throughout, as has been 
seen, it bears analogy to his own life. If it is treated as a 
whole — as an ordered system, presenting arrangements of 
infinite delicacy, and absolutely inexplicable, at least in the 
biological sphere, without the conception of ends — it is 
because in all these respects it presents resemblances to 
man's own consciousness and activity, though infinitely vaster 
in its scope and more delicate in its processes. Further, 
nature considered as evolved, is part of a continuous system 
which is completed in the consciousness of man. Breaks 
there are, and it may be for ever impossible to show that the 
higher is so implicitly contained in the lower, as to be 
developed from it under favoring conditions without the 
entrance of some additional principle or factor from above. 
Yet, while this is the case, the lower is not only completed 
by the higher, but is actually assumed into the higher. 
Chemistry cannot be explained by physics, nor biology by 
chemistry, nor the phenomena of conscious life by biology. 
But in each case the lower is taken up into the higher, and 
becomes one of the limiting conditions of the higher when it 
appears. Hence that which is essential to the satisfaction of 
man is essential to the explanation of the world, because the 
very fact that the world exists only in such relations to 
consciousness brings it within the sphere of the spiritual. 
Distinguished from the spiritual in the first emergence of 
self-consciousness, and maintained in its distinction from 
the spiritual by the growth of moral personality, yet the 
experience of the world proves that it is bound up with the 
spiritual purposes which are wrought out alike in harmony 
with it and in distinction from it. It is thus brought into 
necessary alliance vrith the spiritual, not only in its rudi- 
mentary but in its highest forms. And, further, the world 
is continuous with consciousness, so that, from the historical 
point of view, the highest manifestations of the spiritual 
consciousness have been prepared and introduced as the 
culmination of the natural process which has gone before. 
Hence, since the end of an evolution contains the explanation 
of the whole process of which it is the culmination, and of 
any part which is essential to it, so man, as alike transcending 



268 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

and completing the development of nature, contains its 
explanation. 

Speaking from a somewhat different point of view, man, 
as a self-conscious, spiritual, and ethical being, pursuing the 
most unworldly ends of holiness and goodness, comes to 
his maturity within, and as part of the natural universe. His 
life, in which these higher interests emerge and become 
predominant, is preserved in it and served by it. His very 
sense of distinction from it and superiority over it can only 
be realized in it and by means of it. The result of his 
ceaseless interaction with it is a spiritual and moral indi- 
viduality, which sets up an elaborate system of standards of 
value which he treats as self-evidencing. By means of this 
system his various interests are ranged as higher and lower, 
as primary and supreme or merely instrumental, as healthy 
and normal or the reverse. This fact at once presents an 
alternative. 

(1) It may be claimed that these higher interests are not 
subservient to the interests of physical life. In that case 
they cannot be physically explained. Yet they cannot be 
dismissed as a meaningless and ineffectual by-product, with- 
out doing violence to the primary deliverances of conscious- 
ness. If consciousness is untrustworthy in this respect, it is 
certainly in no wise better entitled to confidence when it 
reveals to us a supposed world by which it is itself reduced 
to nothingness. 

The reality of these higher interests, in some sense 
at least, cannot be denied. Nor, since they are phenomena of 
consciousness, can they be reduced to the terms of the un- 
conscious. Hence, on the supposition that they are not 
life-preserving, the world has been evolved in stages and in 
parts, which, while connected, have each a measure of inde- 
pendence, unfold each its own principles and interests. To 
deny or disparage the reality of any part as it is presented 
to the consciousness is, instead of untying the knot, to cut it 
in the most violent and unscientific way. Suppose that the 
conscious life with its aspirations is not explicable on physical 
grounds, and in that case the explanation of the world must 
be based upon a conception of reality, of which purely 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 269 

physical phenomena are only a part. Human consciousness, 
including the whole of its characteristic content, must have 
its worth and place affirmed in the whole which is to be ex- 
plained. To account for the world on this supposition, all 
aspects of reality must be included and shown to be the mani- 
festation of a higher principle, to which they are all alike 
subservient. 

(2) On the other hand, the hope may be entertained that 
eventually it will be possible to establish the fact that even 
the ideal and spiritual interests of human nature, which 
seem to be entirely independent of merely physical interests, 
are, in reality, promotive of them. In that case it will become 
all the more clearly manifest to those who ascribe supreme 
worth to the spiritual and ideal interests, and to the moral 
standards of life, that the physical world is implicated in, and 
subservient to, a spiritual purpose. For upon this supposi- 
tion, the extent of what we call life is so enlarged, that all 
the higher spiritual and ideal interests are seen to be part of 
it, and inextricably bound up with it. But the whole, as thus 
revealed to consciousness, is spiritual and not merely physical. 
Its natural origination, and the fact that spiritual develop- 
ment serves physical well-being, cannot for a moment destroy 
the independent meaning of the so-called result produced by 
physical processes.' What is in the effect, therefore, must be 
assumed to have been present in the cause; what is involved 
in the fruit to have been implicit in the seed. A spiritual 
result which can be naturalistically explained does not 
thereby, it must be contended, become purely naturalist. 
Eather the nature of the result forces us to revise our conception 
of the means which have produced it, so that the more pro- 
nounced the spiritual result the more essential is it to recognize 
a spiritual potentiality in that which, at first sight, seems 
most natural. 

In short, finite self-consciousness, which, in spite of 
its finitude, ever seeks the infinite and touches with infinity 
every interest which it adopts, becomes a witness to a self- 
conscious, infinite Source, which is ever manifesting itself in 
the nature of the finite. The world exists for self-conscious- 
ness, and self-consciousness comes to its fullness in pursuit of 



270 THE CHBISTIAN RELIGION 

ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness which have no meaning 
except for self-consciousness. Thus man, in proportion as he 
becomes a man, feels himself drawn in two directions, each of 
which, taken in isolation, becomes false and self-destructive. 
He is drawn towards the infinite satisfaction which cannot 
be found in the world as finite and material. In such 
moods he cries — 

From the best bliss that earth imparts 
We turn unfilled to Thee again. 

On the other hand, he returns from this mood of aspiration 
after the infinite, conceived as perfect love, to seek a secular 
progress, which realizes the possibilities of spirit as superior 
to, sovereign over, but therefore to be made manifest in, the 
external world. The story of his life is that of the interaction 
between these two tendencies; occasionally in collision, but in 
the long run in cooperation with one another. A momentary 
satisfaction in the one is generally followed by a new effort in 
respect of the other. It is in this fundamental fact — the 
relation between spiritual striving after the infinite and secular 
progress — that the assurance is given that judgments of value 
in the spiritual world contain also withiu themselves the key to 
the meaning of the natural world. Truth of spirit is truth for 
the universe, which belongs to the system of spirit, and is per- 
fected in the perfecting of spirit. Once affirm the reality and 
worth of the spiritual life, whether in its individual or in its 
collective aspects, and that recognition involves a divine teleology 
which embraces the whole universe, and explains it upon prin- 
ciples which come to light only in the full development of the 
spiritual life. 

II. Such, it must be claimed, is the general position of the 
spiritual consciousness in the world; and such, according to 
the measure of its development, is its importance for the 
explanation of the world. It must now be added that its 
highest expression is in the Christian consciousness, with its 
characteristic sense of a filial relationship to God. This form 
of consciousness is fixed in the authoritative types of Chris- 
tian experience, and is constantly being produced in varying 
degrees of depth and completeness. According to the measure 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 271 

of its fullness is the measure of its Christianity. The realiza- 
tion of this consciousness has been prepared for, as will be 
seen, in the deep, natural foundations in which human nature 
is laid. It is the flower of a long course of spiritual and 
moral development, as the preceding review of religions has 
shown. It has come to its perfection through the conscious- 
ness of sin and of redemption from sin. The characteristic 
note of this consciousness is that of abounding satisfaction 
and of spiritual power. The typical descriptions of it by 
St. Paul and St. John, or indeed by any of the saints who 
have entered into it, are a striking testimony to these two un- 
failing features of filial experience. It has been seen to complete 
and correlate all other experiences. Its realization in the dawn 
of Christianity inaugurated a new epoch, not only in religion, 
but also in secular progress. That era was made possible by 
the far-reaching conditions of the time in which Christianity 
appeared. 

What, then, does this filial consciousness, so decisive for 
Christianity, and so influential in the history of the world, 
affirm? 

1. In the first place it apprehends the Fatherhood 
of God. In so doing it affirms an infinite and eternal source 
and ground of human nature and of the world. It declares 
that source to be spiritual and personal. Further, it asserts 
that this spiritual Personality is all-perfect, completely 
realizing, and therefore ceaselessly inspiring the highest 
ideals. Again, it declares that the life of this all-perfect 
Personality is that of self-giving, and that it is by reason of 
this self-giving that creation exists, and advances stage by 
stage towards those ends which are dimly disclosed in the 
highest ideals, hopes, and efforts of conscious life. Further, 
it affirms the immanence of this divine Personality through- 
out the whole universe in which His purpose is becoming 
growingly manifest. It declares, furthermore, that this 
divine Personality is the sovereign principle of unity which 
unites self and not-self, man and the universe. Because of 
all this, meaning, law, and purpose are inherently sovereign 
in the universe as a whole, presiding over its development, 
and are so reflected in human consciousness that man finds 



272 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

his own faculties the key to the world outside him, and that the 
world finds its realization in producing and ministering to his 
self -consciousness. Such, at least, is the contribution which the 
Christian consciousness makes to the doctrine of God and of 
His relations to the universe. 

For the vast majority of Christians the recognition of this 
divine Fatherhood is accompanied by the recognition of the 
principle of filiation as an essential condition of the divine 
nature. The principle of self-giving, which is, above all, 
manifest in Christ, is apprehended as inherent in the divine 
perfection, and felt to be the source of all spiritual blessedness, 
is seen to depend upon the essential constitution of the divine 
nature. It is the filial in the Godhead which is necessary 
alike to the perfection of the divine life, and to divine 
revelation and self-communication. It is this fact which 
establishes the sovereignty of the divinely filial as the end 
and law of the whole universe, which has its being in and for 
God. Thus the Father subsists eternally in relationships of 
love, which are the explanation not only of the being of the 
Godhead, but of the divine relations to the universe, and 
especially of the fact that the universe attains to its highest 
consummation when the dependence which marks it, and 
the law which rules throughout, have final expression in 
the filial confidence and self-surrender of spiritual conscious- 
ness. Thus the individual is part of a divine and universal 
order, of which the filial is the immanent norm, and that 
general norm receives its individual expression through 
the self-impartation of the divine Spirit, which, proceeding 
from God in spiritual energy, returns to Him in creaturely 
fulfillment. 

2. The testimony of the filial consciousness realized in 
Christianity is as important in its witness to the nature of 
man and his place in the universe, as it is in respect of the 
nature and relationship of God. In the first place, and most 
obviously, it proclaims man's worth, and in the form that 
his worth is worth to God. It is the testimony to 
the fact of the unique importance of his consciousness and 
of its possibilities; the explanation of its meaning as set 
forth by the spiritual relationship in which he stands to God 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 273 

as the all-perfect source of his being. On closer examina- 
tion it is obvious that the truth of any such conscious- 
ness of worth, with the standards which it sets up, must 
depend upon the worth which man possesses for the Author 
and Source of his being. The dignity of man becomes a mere 
declamatory phrase unless that which he asserts of himself, 
the greatness and possibilities of his nature, is grounded 
upon his position in the universe; upon his position as secured 
by its essential meaning, and ultimately by a divine purpose 
which assigns that meaning. Man's position in the universe, 
however unique it may appear to him when he judges it in 
the light of ordinary perception and of common sense, can 
only be made good as depending upon his assured place in the 
entire scheme of things. In the case, therefore, of a being 
whose primary consciousness is that he is spiritual, his worth 
as spiritual must depend upon the reality of the spiritual 
relations which inspire and satisfy his nature; in short, upon 
the ground that the universe is so spiritual, that by its 
essential nature it safeguards and promotes his spiritual 
well-being as a supreme object recognized in the purpose for 
which the world exists. This is the testimony of the filial con- 
sciousness. Man by it finds his satisfaction in a spiritual Source, 
which guarantees his preciousness, and thereby proclaims that 
the universe exists to safeguard and promote the highest ends 
of his being. 

3. Again, the testimony of the filial consciousness bears witness 
to the reality and importance of individuality. Man, however 
close his relationship with the Source of his being, is not to be 
confused with that Source. Within the infinity of the divine 
nature his individual personality is set up, recognized, and 
maintained in its independence, although that independence is 
only perfected as his personality permits itself to be appropri- 
ated by God and brought into relations of trust and obedience 
by which it comes to know and to set forth the divine purposes 
to be realized by its individuality. 

4. Further, the testimony of the filial consciousness is to 
kinship with the Father. Only in the light of such kinship 
can either the worth or the individuality of man be explained. 
The affirmation of spiritual subordination must not degenerate 



274 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

into the undue self-depreciation which magnifies the contrast 
between man and God until the sense of aflSnity is almost de- 
stroyed. In the well-balanced temper of Christianity it is 
exactly the sense of kinship with the Father which supplies the 
point of view and the motive power for the removal of the 
evil — whether due to sin, to ignorance, or to avoidable frailty — 
which brings home the sense of a contradiction between the 
human and the divine. This sense of contradiction carries with 
it in the Christian consciousness, not a judgment as to a final 
and normal matter of fact, still less the abdication of despair, 
but, on the contrary, the sense of something which is to be 
removed as an impediment to full self-realization, because it is 
a contradiction not only of the mind of God, but of the full 
meaning of human nature itself. The starting-point for the 
explanation of human nature is the reality and supremacy of 
divine kinship, in spite of the contradictions which at present 
threaten its destruction. 

5. Hence there is in the filial consciousness an identification 
of man's end with God's end. God's end includes that which 
unfolds the purpose and meaning of human life. Human life 
is perfected in discerning and accomplishing the spiritual end 
of God. The entrance of individuality, with its attendant moral 
responsibility, necessitates that this unity of end can only be 
wrought out on the part of man by means of the self -surrender 
and dependence of love. It is consummated only in that perfect 
realization of the spiritual which depends upon insight into 
the highest meaning of life and spiritual discipline in order to 
its fulfillment. Yet while the divine end is only thus to be 
recognized and fulfilled by a costly process of self-mastery, the 
sure testimony of the Christian consciousness is that by the 
path of self-renunciation and discipline comes the fulfillment, 
not only of the divine purpose, but of the eternal meaning of 
human nature itself. 

6. Again, in the testimony borne by the filial conscious- 
ness to all this is involved the supremacy of love and spirit 
and life in the highest and most ideal significance. The mere 
naturalism of the conception of sonship has become impossible 
when its spiritual implications have dawned upon the mind 
and heart. Sonship means not descent from and nourishment 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 275 

by the conditions and factors of mere physical life. A higher 
world of meaning and consciousness has been evolved, which the 
physical exists to serve. In the subordination of the physical 
to ends higher than those which are contained within itself is 
proclaimed the sovereignty in the universe of higher elements 
than the mere physical, namely, those spiritual interests of love 
which, by the very fact that they are evolved last, are shown to 
have existed first of all. 

7. Hence, bound up with the filial consciousness is con- 
fidence alike in the constitution of the world and in the 
spiritual outlook of life. It is this confidence of the man 
brought into right relations with God which is set forth by the 
frequent use in the New Testament of the terms '^eirship^' 
and "inheritance,'' as signifying the unity of present spiritual 
consciousness with the final anticipation of Christian hope. 
Undoubtedly the purposes of God may contemplate the 
realization of world-ends, to which mankind is subservient. 
Yet the filial consciousness, with its sense of heirship, affirms 
that these ends must be achieved by the fulfillment, and not 
by the sacrifice of the filial nature and destiny of man. And 
this confidence in the nature and ultimate issue of the 
universe has corresponding to it a spiritual consciousness, 
which unites inseparably the sense of present blessedness with 
the intuition of permanence and the assurance of infinitely 
progressive realization. These are held together in mutual in- 
terpenetration and dependence. The obscuration of any one 
of them is an injury to those which are left behind. Immortality 
derives its certainty from the meaning and worth of a 
present consciousness, containing within it the prospect of an 
eternal fulfillment, while this experience of real yet unfolding 
blessedness postulates as its condition the permanence of 
immortality. 

8. Finally, the filial consciousness expresses for its 
possessors a nature fulfilled in and answering to the complex 
relationships of life. Divine in its source, spiritual in its 
nature, it is social in its manifestations. It draws from the 
Infinite the strength and inspiration to give a growing 
manifestation of the social possibilities inherent in the life and 
nature of man. 



276 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

Thus, to sum up, the filial consciousness brings man into 
harmonious relations to the universe, enforcing alike his de- 
pendence and his freedom by reason of the spiritual relationships 
in which he subsists, and bringing him, as he discerns and serves 
a divine purpose immanent in the whole of life, into a master}' 
over the world only tempered by the nature of the divine 
purpose itself. 

All this is the supreme expression of spiritual conscious- 
ness, giving utterance to its characteristic experience as 
manifest in history. This alone expresses its meaning, fulfills 
its characteristic needs, and affords the basis for its noblest 
endeavors. If any part, of this testimony be blotted out, 
so far as it relates to the human side of it, a specific injury, 
^iiich can easily be ascertained, is done to some essential 
quality of the highest human character^ A loss of human 
power in some of its highest manifestations is inevitably 
sustained. The man who loudly proclaims his contradiction 
of any elements of this Christian consciousness is seen by 
his fellows to represent in the purely spiritual world an 
analogy to the man who, having no ear for harmony or eye 
for beauty, pours ridicule upon the highest creations of music 
or of art. The man of more spiritual temperament, who 
reluctantly abandons any element of this consciousness, 
betrays by his very regret that he has declined to accredit 
the inner witness of his own spiritual nature. If the testi- 
mony of the Christian consciousness be blotted out in regard 
to the divine source and ground, our Father which is in 
heaven, then the abandonment means that some element in 
man's nature, indispensable to his highest life, fails to find its 
sufficient stay and its necessary instrument in the universe 
outside his personal life. Hence a division is set up in human 
nature itself, between the conclusions of the investigating 
mind and the aspirations of the spiritual faculties. The 
highest in man's nature is presented to him as the unnatural; 
hence a hopeless lack of rationality, due to the fact that 
nature and consciousness cannot be bound together in 
a consistent whole, and that the noblest ends in spiritual life 
are deemed to pass into excess, or to diverge from the alien 
and inadequate ends of the universe as a whole. To represent 



THE PRIMAHY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 277 

that in the world a process takes place which develops the 
infinite needs of the spiritual consciousness at the beginning 
in order to quench them at the close by an exposure of the 
emptiness of the universe, is to make reason in its final 
exercise hew out for itself '^broken cisterns which can hold 
no water/' in a way that, by reducing the universe to hope- 
less contradiction, equally involves reason in imbecility and 
suicide. 

All human blessedness, as sought by the most various 
religions, is the realization of some aspect oi the filial con- 
sciousness. Even when under the influence of degeneration 
fear has supplanted faith in the human heart, so that religion 
is concerned rather with driving away malign influences than 
with cultivating fellowship with benignant power, evil is 
warded off by religion in order that within the narrow limits 
of life remaining the spirit of trust may have play. The 
filial attitude is sought after with the drawbacks of early 
naivete in all higher forms of nature-worship and of Animism. 
It is exemplified in the endeavors of Brahmanism and 
Buddhism to escape the negations of the creature, and to find 
blessedness by realizing that absolute oneness with the Infinite 
— ^however conceived — which is the inmost and eternal truth. 
It inspires the confidence of the Dualist that good will 
ultimately triumph in the agelong warfare with evil. It gives 
sublimity to the submission of the Moslem to the decrees of Allah 
— however bare and external they may appear to be — in the 
assurance that for such submission is reserved the reward of 
everlasting good. 

Further, all human progress, with the hopes, ideals, con- 
fidence, and courage essential to it, is a manifestation of the filial 
spirit. Even if it be not reflective and complete, it is none the 
less real and implicit. The attitude with which progressive 
manhood faces the world is filial, and needs the essential 
content of the Christian consciousness to justify it. The 
temper which alone makes human life, and above all human 
progress possible, is that of trust, and trust is only justified by 
finding or assuming a trustworthy ground in the world 
to which man stands related. Each power, from the lowliest to 
the highest, as it is developed lives by trust. It relates itself 



278 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

to the universe outside itself as being trustworthy; suited to 
inspire and to satisfy that which is essential to its full de- 
velopment. Each new power lives and flourishes in the universe 
upon this tenure. It exists and is developed by exploring the 
universe in the certainty that it will find there its foundation, 
encouragement, and satisfaction. The man who has attained 
the elevation of the hero and the saint regards the universe, 
for the purposes of his heroism and saintliness, upon exactly 
the same assumptions as govern the life of man when nearest 
to mere animal existence for the ends of merely physical well- 
being. No power of man is self-grounded, self-contained, 
or self-satisfied. Each relates him to a universe in which for its 
peculiar purposes he puts his trust. This act of trust asserts 
that the universe is for that particular purpose trustworthy; 
that is to say, that it is akin to man so far as the nature and 
satisfaction of that particular faculty are concerned. Thus 
each new stage of human development is a revelation to man 
not merely of what is possible in the universe so far as his 
own achievements are concerned, but of what is grounded in 
the essential nature of the universe as satisfying this essential 
relatedness, which is involved in the attitude of trust. Nature 
must be akin to man, in order that he may be a successful 
animal. The universe must be akin to man, in order that he 
may become a hero or a saint. That man may not give effect to 
the full significance of this in his philosophy, does not destroy 
the fact that this assumption is instinctive in the practical spirit 
of his life. 

As has already been seen, this spirit of trust is nurtured in 
man by family relations, in which the life of nature culmiuates, 
and the life of spirit dawns. This mediating position of 
the famUy should be treated as all-important for the inter- 
pretation of the universe. It is the point at which physical 
necessity prepares the way for the opening of a higher 
existence to which mere physical well-being is subordinate. 
Its educative influence ensures that the temper developed in 
the family circle shall, just because it is congenital and natural, 
be extended to the universe which reaches the child through 
its family relations. To treat the spiritual effect of these 
relations as accidental is unphilosophic. Either all things are 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATIOX OF CHRISTIANITY 279 

accidental or nothing is accidental. To treat influences 
upon the human spirit and their effects upon consciousness as 
accidental, and as creating therefore a disqualification rather 
than a qualification for attaining to truth, while magnifying 
their necessity in the physical realm, is to set up a claim 
to reality and independence for the physical as out of 
and independent of consciousness, which is philosophically 
absurd. 

From all this it follows that this attitude of trust is vital 
not only in the case of the supreme spiritual and moral 
interests of man, but in the natural exercise of all his faculties, 
and in the pursuit of all his practical ends. It is clearly 
manifest even in perception, and in the action based upon it. 
Trust is reposed at once in the perceptive faculty, in the 
reality of the world which is revealed to it, and in the 
power of the organs which respond to it and utilize it for the 
practical purposes of life. In the act of perception the 
subjective and the objective are brought together in an act 
which afifirms the interdependence and trustworthiness of 
both. 

The transition from the state of mind involved in ordi- 
nary perception and practical life to the scientific point of 
view reveals exactly the same temper. The spirit of science is 
for its own purpose always gnostic and never agnostic. Its 
characteristic courage, patience, and inventiveness of method 
are all due to the unwavering faith that the universe and the 
intellect of man are so essentially harmonious, that the putting 
forth of intellectual activity governed by its own laws will 
lead to ever-increasing knowledge of nature. Knowledge of 
nature by its very definition means the discovering in it of 
order, method, the natural unfolding of ends which can only 
be perceived or interpreted in terms of the intellectual and 
purposive activity of man. As man becomes rational 
he needs to find, and succeeds in finding, corresponding 
reason in nature. Only an invincible trust that this must be so 
assists him in the often disheartening delays and defeats of 
physical investigation. 

The same practical temper of trust is equally apparent in 
the development of the works by which the results of scientific 



280 THE CHKISTIAN RELIGION 

inquiry are turned to the practical service of mankind. That 
nature will reward patient and intelligent activity, that she will 
be mastered by obeying her, is the implicit faith which has 
enabled men in all ages to transform the wilderness into the 
Garden of the Lord. 

Perhaps the most important example, however, of this spirit 
is found in the case of the social reformer; the outstanding 
representative of a great cause, the importance of which has 
become evident to his own mind, and for which he seeks to 
gain practical acknowledgment and service among his fellow 
men. His strength lies in his implicit trust in the prophetic 
nature of his ideal, and in the practicability of the effort by 
which he seeks to translate his ideal into activity. Whatever 
may be his formal explanation of the universe, his strength 
practically consists in his belief that the good end which he 
adopts is part of the world-end, and therefore can be carried into 
effect. The ultimate which is the object of his hope is the im- 
manent as the nerve of his power. It is but a step from this 
to recognize that what is immanent in him as the ideal spring 
of his effort is also transcendent, eternally existing as purpose 
in the universe before it became temporarily manifest in him 
as receiving and witnessing to this ideal. If in despair he 
should come explicitly to deny this, his hope and power at once 
fail. If his hope and courage are maintained in spite of the 
coldness and hostility of his fellows, it is because there is in 
him an implicit faith, Deus vult. It is this instinctive conscious- 
ness which lies at the very heart of the filial spirit as perfected 
in Christian consciousness. 

The whole of history is a testimony to this truth. Its 
triumphs have been brought about as men in the spirit of 
trust have sought for higher well-being, by the exercise of 
reason and freedom, in the confidence that the world is so 
constituted as to enable them to realize their ideals of the 
good. They have treated evil as so subordiaate in the scheme 
of the universe that its very presence provokes the effort to 
overcome it. Wherever this spirit has failed, not only has 
higher progress been made impossible, but the continuance 
even of physical existence has been endangered. All growth 
of character has meant increased power to realize both in 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 281 

thought and effort the rationality and serviceableness of the 
world. Men have in the practical sphere done what Plato 
did in the theoretic, identified the Idea of Being with the 
Idea of the Good. In short, it may be claimed that all 
the higher life of man consists in this identification, and that 
wherever he has failed in the act of trust, which counts upon 
the highest good as having the highest claim to existence and 
the final certainty of it, he has sunk beneath himself as man, 
and has become incapable of the noblest efforts of life. The 
idea of the Good has greatly varied in kind and in fullness, but 
beneath these variations, faith that the good is the practicable 
because the truly existent has been the power with which men 
have faced the problems and conflicts of their life. And this 
again is the filial spirit, acting upon the presumption that a 
purpose of good runs through all human life, as conditioned by 
the universe, so that hope and effort for the larger good are 
ever justified both in principle and in result. 

The filial consciousness as perfected in Christianity com- 
pletes therefore the spirit which is essential to the success of 
man in any of the interests of his life. It manifests this spirit 
in its highest exercise in regard to the highest interests of life. 
It exhibits in complete form the spiritual grounds upon which 
it is justified. It consecrates to the highest exercise this 
universal and vital principle of all successful life. Based upon 
the supreme spiritual experience of Christ, it yet gives com- 
plete and final expression to all the elements and relations 
which religious consciousness has been everjrwhere seeking to 
express. It is something which, while given in a direct religious 
experience, brings assurance, energy, and satisfaction to 
the whole of man's being — spiritual, affectional, moral, and 
rational. It makes good and completely manifests the grounds 
of that prevailing temper, the loss of which in any department 
of life reduces man to helplessness and confusion. Seen in this 
light, the onus prohandi rests upon those who challenge Chris- 
tianity, not on those who place trust in it. Its position in life 
and in the world may well give its possessors courage to look in 
the face alike seeming contradictions to its essential principles 
in the scheme of things, or philosophic difficulties in its theoretic 
exposition. 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

The metaphysical and moral difficulties involved in 
the testimony of the filial consciousness will be dealt with 
subsequently in this inquiry. Meanwhile it is necessary to ob- 
serve that the truth and importance of the filial spirit have been 
so clearly perceived by many of those who, on account of meta- 
physical difficulties or naturalistic presuppositions, refuse to 
accept its theistic testimony, that they have made strenuous 
efforts to preserve many of its essential features on some other 
basis. 

This has been done in various ways. In the first 
place, efforts have been made to stimulate what is called "cosmic 
emotion,^^ and to utilize it for the practical purposes of religious 
life. The object of such emotion is the universe, of which 
man is conceived to be a natural product, as manifesting 
system and order. It is obvious at once that such an object 
of emotion can come to mean various things, according to 
differences in the metaphysical view of those who adopt it. 
It is possible that it should verge upon Theism; representing 
an attempt to express that sense of the incommensurateness 
of the Divine Being with the ordinary limitations of 
human personality, and that more intimate union of the Divine 
Being with the system of nature which philosophic Theism 
is itself anxious to recognize. At this point, however, of 
approximation to definite and philosophic Theism, there is a 
twofold hesitation: first of all to attribute personality as the 
source and ground of the order manifest in the universe; and 
secondly, to do justice to that differentiation of selfhood from 
the mere system of nature, which is so marked a condition of 
human consciousness and human progress. This twofold 
tendency is very clearly manifest in the ordinary forms of 
this endeavor. Human personality, and therewith its testi- 
mony to divine personality, is practically resolved away. 
Nature in its otherness from what is distinctive of conscious- 
ness is elevated into an unreal abstraction, and assigned a 
preeminence which does not belong to it in the ordinary 
deliverances of human consciousness. This depreciation of 
personality, and undue prominence given to the so-called 
natural and practically materialistic aspects of the universe, 
results in the setting up of an unspiritual and unethical object 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 383 

of religious emotion. It involves an abandonment, so far 
as the object of worship is concerned, of the spiritual and ethical 
features of the universe, as made manifest in human con- 
sciousness. It therefore substitutes vague feeling for the 
whole conceived as infinite, ordered, but impersonal, for the 
Personality which is sought by the religious affections. It 
substitutes vastness and evolutionary order for the standards 
of value which have been attained by the spiritual and moral 
efforts of mankind. It is therefore an attempt to keep the 
emotions of religion without the presuppositions which alone 
can justify these emotions in the case of a spiritual and moral 
being who pursues holy and righteous ends. As such, man 
must find the object of worship in something which is kindred 
to the highest and best in himself, not in the mer^ process by 
which he has come to be what he is, especially when there is 
a determined effort to think away from the source and the 
process any similarity to the holiness and righteousness which 
have been reached as the finally satisfying end of human life. 
It is as the prolific and orderly source of all kinds of existence 
that the cosmos is to arouse emotion, instead of as "the power, 
not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.^* Certain states 
of emotion are permitted by the absence of definition, and by 
the temporary negation of moral interests. As a momentary 
relief they may have a wholesome function to fulfill, but when 
systematized and made to represent that which is essential in 
religious life they sacrifice just what is indispensable to spiritual 
progress, namely, the growing prevalence of the moral values 
of life. 

In the second place, the Eeligion of Humanity is offered 
as a substitute for the theistic basis of the filial consciousness. 
At first sight it might be supposed that this attempt repairs 
the injury done by the previous one, in that it centers the 
worship of man upon the human as contrasted with the 
non-human. But this first impression gives way on closer 
examination. In the first place, the significance of the human 
is done away by a purely naturalistic explanation, which 
attempts to reduce to physical terms the peculiarities of 
spiritual and moral consciousness. In the second place, 
humanity is an abstraction and not a reality. It may include 



284 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the whole of mankind, past, present, and future, without 
any differentiation. In that case, a diffused sympathy, which 
vanishes at the touch of definition, is all that can result. Or 
a selection is made of some special type embodied in a par- 
ticular personality, chosen as specially worthy to represent 
humanity. But such selection is either arbitrary, or must 
be justified by considerations which introduce the most im- 
portant modifications into the very conception of humanity 
which has been set up as supreme. Spiritual and moral standards 
are adopted for the definition of humanity which cannot be 
justified logically as being involved in the abstract conception 
of it when presented as the innumerable company of mankind, 
past, present, and future, and which cannot be justified gene- 
tically by the consideration of man as a merely natural product 
existing under diverse conditions of religion, morality, and 
civilization. Such an object of worship therefore supplies no 
standard for consistent moral guidance. It contains no satis- 
factory source of moral obligation, for it is clear that no 
obligation can exist either towards an abstraction or towards 
the multitude of individuals, past, present, and future. And 
impracticable as the object is for the moral guidance of life, it 
remains finite. It is not the All, nor is it the source of its 
own life, nor is it infinite; whether the infinite be sought as 
the object of affection and worship or as the absolute perfection 
which kindles the faculties to the attainment of moral excel- 
lency hitherto unrealized. For such effort, not humanity as 
it exists, but the ideal as it never yet has existed in this 
temporal world, is the only adequate object of worship. The 
strength of the religion of humanity, therefore, would seem to 
lie in the implications which it introduces from spiritual 
and moral sources elsewhere, but which are without justifica- 
tion either in its logical concept, or in its narrowly naturalist 
outlook. 

A third effort would substitute the Infinite and the 
Absolute as impersonal for the God of Christian Theism. 
The metaphysical questions involved must be reserved for 
discussion at a later stage. Passing over for the moment 
all question whether the idea of the Infinite and the Absolute 
can be made metaphysically satisfactory, it is clear that the 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 285 

conclusion that the Infinite and the Absolute are incompatible 
with personality destroys in the object of worship exactly 
those qualities of trust and affection which are most marked 
in all higher religion, and have their complete manifestation 
in the filial consciousness of Christianity. The religion which 
adores the indefinableness of the Infinite and the Absolute 
is one which is emptied of all the distinctive qualities of 
faith, hope, and love. Moreover, such an object, while it 
may bring to men the refreshing which comes to them in 
the light of setting suns and in the sense of the sublime 
vastness of nature, fails essentially in giving moral inspiration 
to life. The very fact that the supreme Infinite and Absolute 
is impersonal involves that it is non-moral, and that therefore 
the moral effort which fills the content of the noblest human 
life is at every point of it a departure from the Infinite 
and the Absolute — or a more accentuated contrast to it. 
Indefiniteness is the nearest approach to absorption in it, 
and every step in the addition of distinction, however holy 
and necessary the human conscience may pronounce them 
to be, only carries those who take it further from the 
sympathy of the Infinite and the Absolute, if sympathy it 
can be supposed to have. Man is made by the perfecting of 
personality; the Source of his being is perfect in being 
impersonal. Thus the line of human advance is, impossible 
though it may seem, an advance ever further from the 
direction of its source. Such a conclusion of history would, 
at the best, be an anomaly inexplicable by reason. But to 
make that the object of worship which is the contradiction 
of what man is by nature, and of what, according to his 
worth, he is tending to become, is to introduce a contradiction 
into the inner life of the spirit itself. It is at one and 
the same moment to turn to the setting sun of indefiniteness in 
its worship while facing the new dawn of ever-growing 
personal distinction in its heroic and saintly effort. Such a 
solution, therefore, destroys the unity Of the universe of which 
personality is the highest product ; the unity also of the spiritual 
life itself. 

One more such effort must be considered in some detail, 
that of Professor Hoffding in his Philosophy of Religion. 



286 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

According to his view, "Eeligion is faith in the preservation 
of value, and ethics investigates the principles according to 
which the discovery and production of values takes place."^ 
By this is meant that the rational progress of mankind 
depends upon the continuous discovery of ends of action, 
objects of aifection, and postulates of thought, by the main- 
tenance of which alone can the well-being of humanity be 
secured. Ethics investigates the nature of these, and lays 
down the principles which govern their pursuit. But religion 
supplies the faith, including steadfastness, courage, and devo- 
tion, by which each value, when once ascertained, is pursued. 
This, however, is not enough. It is necessary to believe that 
the universe is so constituted as to have regard to the 
values which are essential to the well-being of man. Hoffding 
calls "the feeling which is determined by the relation between 
value and reality the cosmical vital feeling/'^ The axiom 
of religion is the conservation of value, which corresponds 
in the spiritual realm to that of the conservation of energy 
in the physical. This axiom "meets religious need, since this 
need consists in the desire to hold fast to the conservation 
of the highest values beyond the limits which experience 
exhibits, and in spite of all the transformations which 
experience reveals. Or, in other words, faith is fidelity, and 
the content of faith is that fidelity prevails throughout ex- 
istence. Fidelity is conservation, continuity throughout all 
changes."^ 

But this content of faith cannot be established on a completely 
rational basis. And for two reasons. 

In the first place, man cannot have complete experience 
of existence. "Since the criterion of reality can never be 
more than approximately applied, so too the concept of reality 
is itself really an ideal concept. We work with it, as with 
various other concepts, in spite of their inevitable incom- 
pleteness. Existence is not presented to us as completed, 
and who knows if indeed it really is completed? Perhaps 
it is for ever in the toils of becoming, so that the continual 
appearance of new empirical content is no mere accident. 



1 Philosophy of Religion (English translation), p. 374. 
a Ibid., p. 110. » Ibid., p. 216. 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 287 

If this be so, we understand why existence always remains 
incommensurable with our knowledge, however great the 
advances of the latter."^ Hence the manifold contradictions 
into which thought falls in its attempts to determine the 
nature of reality and the relations subsisting within it, as, for 
example, between God and the world ; each of which is assumed 
to be infinite, while, despite this, each is limited by its relations 
to the other. 

The second cause of uncertainty is that man is compelled 
to judge by his own standard, and cannot be sure that this 
represents the standard of the universe. "All estimation of 
value — as all understanding and all explanation — is under- 
taken from the place occupied by humanity in existence, 
and is determined by the conditions of human life. But this 
standing-ground and these conditions of life are limited, and 
we cannot obtain a view of their connection with the rest of 
existence. "We only get over this difficulty by conceiving 
the human race and its planet as the center of existence; 
but the Copernican conception of the world has enlarged our 
horizon, and thereby rendered the problem of the conservation 
of value far more complex than it was before. The fact that 
the history of our highest values is interwoven with a great 
whole of which we can never catch sight, not only makes it 
impossible to find an objective foundation for it, but also 
makes it impossible to give the faith in the conservation 
of value a definite and still more an intuitive form. Beyond 
the general notion that that which possesses real value stands 
in such close connection with the forces moving in existence, 
that it must persist under one form or another, we cannot 
pass."2 

Hence this uncertainty, which involves both the meaning 
and, by consequence, the future of the universe, can never 
be cleared up. There is an additional difficulty in determining 
the question by personal immortality, for even if the values 
represented of human life be preserved by the universe, this 
may be done in other ways than by the survival of the 
particular individuals of whom mankind is composed. "How 
a single personal life is bound up with the laws and values 

> Philosophy of Religion (English translation), p. 247. 2 Ibid., pp. 255-6. 



288 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of the whole of existence is an insoluble problem. But if there 
be an inner connection between it and them, so that our noblest 
and highest striving contains something which cannot die 
(whatever may be the form under which it is preserved), this 
value only arises when we take this life, the life which is known 
to us, as an independent task and attribute to it independent 
value." ^ 

The result of the whole investigation, therefore, is that "to 
live eternal life in the midst of time, that is the true immor- 
tality, whether or not there is any other immortality. The 
distinction between end and means falls away in such moments 
and in such strivings, as indeed it always disappears whenever 
there is any true personal life; and with this vanishes also the 
distinction between religion and ethics, for the ethical includes 
the religious.'' 

With the general view of religion as concerned with the con- 
servation of value, there is no need to quarrel. It represents a 
most important aspect of the matter. That which is involved 
in this demand must ever be for man, at least under earthly 
conditions, the most important subjective verification of revela- 
tion, the standard of criticism by which all religions must be 
judged. Substantially, this has been the standpoint taken in 
our previous inquiry. 

But closer examination will justify us in raising upon 
this foundation a much more commanding edifice of rational 
faith than Professor Hoffding allows. The positive content 
of the "eternal life" which we are bidden to live "in the 
midst of time" consists of such ethical ideals and conduct 
as are the outcome of "our noblest and highest striving." 
Such striving is for the fulfillment of a spiritual nature which 
in its self-affirmation, its religious consciousness, and its vast 
possibilities is, so far as our knowledge extends, unique. 
But this spiritual nature is something which, with its 
standards of value, is given to us. It issues from the heart 
of that mysterious Eeality, the secret of which we are seeking 
to explore. The value, therefore, by which and for which 
the noblest human life is created cannot be arbitrary or 
even merely subjective. It is prescribed for us, not merely 

1 Philosophy of Religion (English translation), p. 384. 



THE PRIMABY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 289 

by ourselves, not even by humanity — ^whether past, present, 
or future — but by the Source of all being. Is it not, therefore, 
most rational to assume that the ethical character, by which 
human nature is realized, has the same value for the Source 
which lays it down as for us who receive it as a possibility to 
be fulfilled. 

Professor Hoffding himself goes far to admit this. He says, 
*^ Although our finite points of view and forms of thought are 
not able to afford us a definition, still less an exhaustive formu- 
lation of this principle [of being], yet they must stand in in- 
terconnection with it, and we are not justified in declaring them 
to be without significance. Our thought, our knowledge itself 
forms part of existence, has arisen within it, and is itself one 
of the facts which must be taken into consideration before we 
bring our inquiry into the nature of being to a conclusion. 
The ideas which our experience prompts us to develop are 
probably, in comparison with the great related whole of which 
we form a part as individual members, both subordinate and 
derivative; devoid of all significance, however, we need not 
suppose them to be. Only we are not able to indicate the degree 
and nature of the metamorphosis our points of view will 
have to undergo before they can be assimilated into the highest 
and most all-embracing interconnection that we are able 
to conceive.'^ ^ 

This statement not merely warrants, but necessitates the 
strengthening of the conclusion. Xot only need we not treat the 
ideas which are vital to our well-being as "devoid of all signifi- 
cance,^' but, on the contrary, we are bound to assume that they 
have the most important significance. It matters little that 
they are "subordinate and derivative," or that they will undergo 
considerable metamorphosis when our experience is deepened 
and widened. That they are subordinate and derivative implies 
that they are part of a governing whole which is consistent with 
them and shares with them its validity. And such metamor- 
phosis as is implied in fulfillment involves of necessity a per- 
fecting which is the exact opposite of any belittling, stiU more 
of destruction. 

And this is not all. The Christian religion, which has by 

1 Philosophy of Religion (English translation), pp. 88, 89. 



290 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

all confession been the most fruitful in creating ethical values, 
has affirmed their mundane value precisely on the ground of 
their supra-mundane significance. Its essential peculiarity 
has been that in this respect it has been the religion not 
merely of demand, but of affirmation; not merely of hope, 
but of inspired realization. This is the import of the filial 
consciousness; by this it at once perfects religion and 
guarantees ethics. Hence the characteristic deliverance of 
this consciousness is that it is inspired by the Source of all 
things, and that it gives intuitive assurance of what, on the 
facts shown, would be rationally inferred. Professor Hoffding 
remarks that "we get the deepest form of faith when the 
will asserts itself, unblunted and unexhausted, precisely at its 
own limit, in a lively wish that the highest value may be 
realized. The deepest religious word ever spoken is the 
prayer of Jesus: ^Not My will, but Thine be done.^ The will 
is surrendered, but this surrender is itself a positive wish, or, 
at any rate, is but the negative side of a positive wish."^ But 
the strength — ^nay, the indispensable condition — of this 
surrender is not a mere wish, but a triumphant assurance that 
the will to which the surrender is made is at once so good and 
so mighty that the highest value will certainly be realized, in 
spite of all outward seeming which threatens the opposite. It 
is not the wish, so much as the assurance, which makes this not 
only "the deepest," but the most creative, "religious word 
ever spoken.'^ 

Moreover, although we cannot pass from the human to a 
more universal standpoint, or view existence in its complete- 
ness, whether present or future, we are not left without any 
verification of the conclusions of reason, or of the revelation 
contained in the highest inspiration of the filial consciousness. 
The history of evolution is spread out before us. This, so far 
as our world is concerned, culminates in man, supplies him 
with the materials and the conditions of his civilization, 
and incites him to pursue it. Within this great system is 
developed the religious consciousness, which appropriates 
and interprets the whole of this process. The cosmic and the 
human are thus bound together, and, as has been seen, man's 

1 Philosophy of Religion (English translation), p. 127. 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 291 

end is, so far, the world's end. It matters not that we have 
exchanged the Ptolemaic for the Copernican point of view. It 
is not necessary to assert that man's end is either the exclusive 
or even the highest end of the universe. Wherever other beings 
may be found of equal worth and possibilities, and wherever 
other cosmic systems may exist in organic relation to them, the 
same principles of explanation are applicable. Even supposing 
that the end of the universe is distinct from, and perhaps higher 
than, the ends that can be realized in man or in any other 
possible orders of finite existence, all that is contended for is 
that the universal end cannot be served by the contradiction, 
but only by the fulfillment of the particular ends revealed in 
the nature and history of mankind, and in those of similarly 
subordinate spiritual beings elsewhere. 

This assurance is reached on the ground of the affirmations 
of value with which Eeality supplies us, and by which it 
enables us to take our part in unfolding its meaning and 
realizing its progress. If veracity is to be attributed to all' 
other instincts and intuitions by which life is served, at least 
equally must it be attributed to this upon which the whole 
depends. 

Just here, then, the central presence of Christ and of the' 
filial consciousness He inspires and illuminates becomes of de- 
cisive importance, as completely revealing and authenticating 
the principle upon which all rational, ethical, and religious 
interests alike depend. 

The principle of the conservation of value involves the 
permanence — the personal immortality — of the individual in 
whom this value is inwrought. How can those values be 
preserved if alike the spiritual result and the process in 
which alone such value consists are brought to an end by 
death or by any other catastrophe? Even if such value can 
be transferred to successors, what avails this, if they also in 
their turn pass away, and if human life itself be but an 
episode in the history of the universe? The conservation of 
value everywhere certainly implies personal immortality 
somewhere. And those who pay h6ed to the characteristic 
sense of man that he is not merely a means, but an end, will' 
draw from this fact — to say nothing of other considerations 



293 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

that may be urged- — the assurance that this immortality is the 
universal destiny of man, or, at least, in so far as he realizes the 
values which are to be conserved. If I count it immoral con- 
duct towards my neighbor to treat him as a mere means to my 
own ends, must not the Ruler of the universe display a 
standard of conduct equally high? He will not consummate 
His work by an act so literally irrational and immoral— by 
whatever names it may be called — as is involved in the de- 
struction of that which He has brought to the spiritual 
maturity which demands immortality by evoking trustful 
dependence on Himself. 

Thus, finally, it is the meaning of God contained in the 
filial consciousness of Christianity which alone gives assurance 
of the conservation of value. According to Professor Hoffding, 
^^From a purely theoretical (epistemological and metaphysical) 
standpoint, the concept of God can mean nothing other than 
the principle of the continuity, and hence of the comprehensi- 
bility, of existence. From the religious point of view, God, 
as the object of faith, means the principle of the conservation 
of value throughout all oscillations and all struggles, or, if we 
like to call it so, the principle of fidelity in existence.'^^ Again, 
we are told, ^'Great religious personalities have called the 
object of their highest trust and love ^God,' and we can 
comprehend this if we understand by ^God' the principle 
of the conservation of value in reality .^'^ The word "principle'' 
is a mere abstraction. It stands, or should stand, for a per- 
sistent course of action, actuated by the purpose of securing 
spiritual values. It may be said that to read such a meaning 
into it is only an example of the anthropomorphic imagina- 
tion, and that it is unessential or misleading. But how can I 
credit the universe, or its Source, with a steadfast principle to 
maintain spiritual value, unless it, or He, be indeed spiritual? 
^nd how can the term "spiritual" be understood, unless it 
connotes a perfect consciousness by which the worth of the 
spiritual is appreciated and its upholding is decreed? Such 
a principle can, therefore, only reside in and be enforced by 
a supreme Subject, and religious faith is reposed, not in the 
principle, but in the Subject whose character and conduct it 

» Philosophy of Religion (English translation), p. 134. « Ibid., p. 186. 



THE PRIMARY VERIFICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 293 

expresses. The fundamental mistake of such a system of thought 
as that of Professor Hoffding, in spite of its insight and ethical 
earnestness, is the turning aside to abstractions which in them- 
selves can neither inspire nor explain religious faith, because of 
a fear to affirm the Personality which is essential both to the 
abstractions and to the faith, on account of the imperfection of 
any human endeavor adequately to represent the conditions of 
His transcendent life. 

All such efforts, therefore, to preserve the filial consciousness 
without its theistic basis are a testimony alike to the necessity 
and naturalness of that consciousness, and to the impracticability 
of maintaining it with consistent thought upon any other than 
the theistic grounds upon which it rests in the life and revelation 
of Christ. The perfectly filial is the perfectly human, and the 
perfectly filial is only possible with the Christian content. This 
is the primary verification of the Christian religion. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHRISTIAN EXPLANATION OF THE WORLD 
AND THE REJOINDER OF NATURALISM 

THE investigation pursued in these pages up to this 
point has shown Christianity to be the perfect 
satisfaction of the demands of religion, fulfilling in 
itself the religious consciousness and infinitely transcending 
all its previous manifestations. It so fulfills it as to present 
to us a religion which, while it is the inspiration and 
completion of all the noblest forms of spiritual life, is also true 
to the essential spirit by which alone can success in any 
sphere or interest of human life be achieved. The essential 
of the Christian consciousness has been seen to be the filial 
spirit, which, original in our Lord, has been conveyed by 
Him to all His followers with a fullness proportionate to the 
faithfulness and completeness of their discipleship. It is in 
the filial consciousness that religion emerges in its highest 
spiritual and moral form, satisfying the intensest needs, 
harmoniziQg the various interests, and giving power to the 
many-sided efforts of human life. Within that consciousness, 
as has been seen, is contained an intuitive doctrine of the 
Fatherhood of God. That intuitive doctrine contains the 
following affirmations: that there is an infinite and eternal 
Source and Ground of the universe; that that Source is 
spiritual and personal; that He is all-perfect, completely 
realizing in Himself, and ceaselessly inspiring throughout 
creation, the highest ideals; that the essential spirit of His 
life is self-giving, and that it is by this that the fact of 
creation, and the steady advance of creation until it attains 
to the highest standards, hopes, and efforts of conscious life, 

294 



CHBISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 295 

must be explained ; that this divine Source is immanent, through- 
out the universe, the principle and end of its unity, so that, 
because of this immanence, holy purpose, rational meaning, 
spiritual law, and the goodness of perfect love are inherently 
sovereign. 

We are now to examine the meaning, consistency, and 
validity of this intuitive consciousness of the Christian re- 
ligion, to define and to justify to thought its content, both as 
being the only satisfactory explanation of reality, and as 
capable of being embodied in a satisfactory doctrine of the 
being and nature of God. It is possible that some may 
question both the necessity and the possibility of such an 
undertaking. For example, Mr. Merz, in his remarkable 
work. The History of European Thought in the Nineteenth 
Century, writing in a s}Tnpathetic spirit towards religion, 
says, "The conviction is gradually gaining ground that 
scientific and religious thought emanate from two sep- 
arate centers, that although they inevitably come into frequent 
contact, the study of their independent origin and history, 
and their different psychological method, is more valuable 
than a temporary and merely ephemeral compromise of their 
respective doctrines. Happily, this country has produced many 
great and a few thinkers of the first order, in whom the greatest 
that scientific thought has achieved was in harmony with a 
truly religious spirit. In contemplating these illustrious ex- 
amples, and bowing before their greatness, the popular mind will 
probably find its conviction of the possibility of an ultimate 
reconciliation of both aspects, more strengthened than by leaning 
on the doubtful support of a voluminous apologetic literature, 
which proposes to give general proofs where only individual faith 
can decide." 1 

With all that is here said as to the separate sources, 
methods, and history of scientific and religious thought, the 
present writer, at least, is in general agreement. Yet, as has 
been urged throughout the present inquiry, scientific thought 
has been largely indebted to religious and theological sources 
for its initiation, and can easily be shown to be an abstract 



1 The History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, vol. ii., pp. 
324, 325. 



296 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

part of a larger rational whole, though it has abundantly 
justified on practical grounds its claim to an independent 
position and procedure. Again, nothing is less serviceable 
to the interests, either of science or religion, than "a tempo- 
rary and mere ephemeral compromise of their respective 
doctrines/^ It is in the completion of all the testimony which 
either science or religion can bear to reality that the ultimate 
reconciliation must be found, and not either in truncating 
one or the other, or in attempting to set up a system whether 
of artificial arrangement or of insincere professions between 
them. At the same time, ^'individual faith'' is nothing, 
especially in scientific men, unless it seeks to be rational, 
and the spectacle of those who are at once great scientific 
thinkers and also religious men is likely to weaken instead of 
to strengthen the general belief in "the possibility of an ulti- 
mate reconciliation of both aspects,'' if they justify their indi- 
vidual faith on grounds that are at once open to intellectual 
challenge. Individual faith must justify itself as rational, 
and the most fervent expressions of it from the most dis- 
tinguished men can only serve its interests if they can be 
expressed ia terms of universal reason. In the same way, if, as 
has already been seen, Christianity is the supreme satisfaction of 
the needs of spiritual consciousness, this can only be the case 
because it is true. This involves that it should be consistent 
within itself, and, however independent, consistent with all other 
realms of discovered truth. Doubtless, the final synthesis which 
will harmonize all aspects and elements of truth is far in the 
future, and may never be completely attained, but each age 
must use all its resources, and put forth its highest endeavor 
to approximate to such a solution in the interests alike of reason 
and of religion. 

Hence it is necessary now to consider the power of 
Christianity to explain the world and life in detail, and to 
furnish a rational and consistent doctrine of God. This 
inquiry must be made in the light of objections urged against 
it and of alternatives offered. It will be necessary to make 
good the following three contentions: firstly, that Christianity 
furnishes the only satisfactory explanation of the universe; 
secondly, that it gives the key to the nature, condition. 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 297 

destiny, and salvation of mankind; thirdly, that it contains a 
consistent and reasonable doctrine of God. It is difficult com- 
pletely to separate these three branches of inquiry. They are 
mutually implicated, yet they are in substance distinct. The 
first deals with the necessity of the idea of God furnished by 
the Christian religion for the explanation of the universe as it 
exists. The second deals especially with what has been made 
manifest of the divine dealings in the history of mankind. 
The third deals with the possibility of finding a satisfactory 
rational construction of what is intuitively given in religious 
experience, and confirmed by reflection upon the nature of the 
universe. 

The present chapter is concerned with the explanation of the 
world. 

Two questions must be asked at the outset — What is it 
to explain the world? and What is the world which is to be 
explained ? 

As to the former, the following elements are indispensable. 
Firstly, a complete descriptive account of things and their mutual 
relations. To secure this is the primary task of the whole of the 
special sciences. 

Secondly, a complete unification of reality as described by the 
special sciences under a supreme constitutive principle. All 
efforts at world-explanation represent an attempt to unify the 
whole system of things, the ultimate subject of controversy being 
the sufficiency of the principle selected for such complete 
unification. 

Hence, thirdly, a final explanation necessitates that the 
unifying principle shall be a sufficient reason; that is to say, 
it must be a principle which needs no further explanation, 
but can legitimately be treated as absolute as well as ulti- 
mate, containing within itself the source of all that proceeds 
from it. 

As to the second question, the world to be explained is 
nothing less than the sum-total of all related existences. The 
attempt to explain this sum-total of related existences, which 
we call the universe, proceeds from a first impression derived 
from actual and common experience. That first impression 
is that the world of existences is stable, that it is ordered by 



398 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

law, that it constitutes a system or systems thus ordered by 
law, and that therefore it is an intelligible whole. Until 
this first impression is produced no explanation is sought, 
and no attempt at explanation is made. But this impression 
of stability, law, and intelligible system grows steadily with 
the development of the human mind. The impression of 
order and the unfolding of mental power act and react upon 
one another. It is as man begins to create an order for him- 
self that he seeks to find order in the world to which he 
belongs. The more he himself becomes delivered from the 
chaotic succession of impulses and desires, so that he creates, 
within however narrow limits, ordered means to secure steadfast 
ends, so much the more does he become conscious of an external 
order of things upon which he may depend. The discovery of 
such an external order forces him to study its nature, and 
systematically to adapt himself to it if he would secure the 
fulfillment of his own purposes. Thus, step by step, the im- 
pression and experience of an external order of things is 
matured, and as reflective processes are awakened in his mind, 
he makes that order of things the subject of investigation apart 
from any other practical results to himself save the pure 
satisfaction of comprehending the natural order to which 
he belongs. 

Thus, man's ordering alike of his inward impulses and of 
the outward means which he creates to satisfy his desires is in 
fulfillment of purpose. It is as he becomes the subject of in- 
creasingly steadfast purposes, and grows in the power of selecting 
and using an ever-wider compass and an ever-extending succes- 
sion of means for their fulfillment, that the full range and 
power of his own self-consciousness is unfolded. New realms 
of purposes gradually open to him as his spiritual development 
proceeds, and with these new realms such new powers of mental 
activity and such new interests in the world as almost to 
•constitute for him a new relationship to it. 

Eightly or wrongly, therefore, man, when he comes to ex- 
plain the world, does so instinctively by the same princi- 
ples which govern the development of his own spiritual life. 
Wherever he finds activity in the world, and especially where 
he finds that reliable activity which we call the uniformity 



OHBISTIANITT AND NATURALISM 299 

of nature, he attributes the activity to purpose, and its per- 
sistence to persistence of purpose. He sees within it all, 
therefore, the exercise of will. It may be impulsive. Many 
wills may appear to him to be acting in concert or in conflict 
with one another. Or he may attain to the belief in one 
sovereign will manifestiug itself through all the operations 
of nature. But, however this may be, activity, and above 
all, regular activity, means to him a purpose to be realized, 
and therefore a wUl which selects and adheres to it. Nature, 
therefore — as he becomes capable of the conception — is under- 
stood by him to be an order for securing ends. It is only 
at a later stage that natural order becomes depersonalized, 
and then the apparent invasion of order by the extraordinary 
suggests purpose rather than that upon which expectation 
has learned to count. In the first stage of this conception 
man's inner sense of his own importance makes him treat 
these ends as directly and perhaps exclusively relative to 
himself. The sunshine and refreshing showers of the spring 
are signs of the divine favor which would do him good, 
while the storm or the eclipse are tokens of wrath which he 
must endeavor to propitiate. Yet the intended effects upon 
him of these various experiences of nature are seen by him 
to take place, not for his own sake ultimately, but for the 
sake of a divine and sovereign end, with which he is now at 
one, and now at enmity. Hence, as the world is conceived 
to subserve the divine end or ends, this subservience is 
seen to be the final cause of its creation and the key to 
its meaning. 

Thus, the sufficient reason of the world is originally 
demanded and discovered, because the inquirer extends to the 
universe the analogy of his own self-consciousness. The 
sufficient reason of his own thoughts, desires, and purposes, 
together with that of the mechanism which he calls into 
existence to satisfy them, lies in his own personality as self- 
conscious will. Within the sphere of his own self-conscious- 
ness no other explanation is needed of his thoughts, affections, 
and purposes, than that he thinks them, feels them, and 
wills them. When he seeks a sufficient reason for the world 
outside him with its changes, and still more with its ordered 



300 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

changes, he finds in it personality, akin though superior to 
his own, whose thoughts and purposes the world exists to 
carry out. 

Such is the general history, about which there is little or 
no controversy. But in recent times, and under the influence 
of abstract scientific conceptions, the whole of this mental process 
has been treated as illusory, save the one part of it which finds 
order in nature. Nay more, every other element has been ex- 
cluded as illegitimate for the sake of the one element of order 
which is recognized, and it is even contended that the con- 
ception of order is imperiled if it is attributed to personality 
and will as its source. The idea that nature serves man is 
dismissed as due to a conceited sense of self-importance which 
arises from a restricted experience. With the dethronement 
of man as the end of the operations of nature comes the 
dethronement of all that for which man stands in the 
constitution of the universe. Thus, will is conceived from the 
standpoint of its power to break in upon an order of things, 
rather than from that of its power to create and to sustain 
such an order. 

Hence, the only common ground from which all alike can start 
in their endeavor to explain the world is that it is presented to 
us as an ordered whole. Yet, if this be so, the first question 
that must be asked is. What is the nature of the world, which is 
thus presented to us as ordered? As to this, the following 
outstanding facts must be borne in mind. 

Firstly, the world as an ordered system manifests a regular 
development which embraces within it the fulfillment of many 
special ends. 

To begin with, it is a system, the vastness, delicate 
minuteness, and universal inter-relaiion of which the prog- 
ress of science is only just beginning adequately to reveal 
to us. If the telescope, assisted by photography, brings within 
our observation system upon system of constellations, and 
suggests the possibility of an infinite number which must for 
ever lie beyond the possibility of earthly perception, these 
are all seen to be included in the network of common rela- 
tions, and subject to like physical laws. At the other end 
of the scale of existence observation reaches to the threshold 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 301 

of the infinitesimal, and its indications suggest elaborated rela- 
tions between all its parts at least as wonderful as those which 
rule in stellar spaces. In short, nothing is too vast and nothing 
is too minute to be brought within the range of a common system 
of organized relations which are equally illustrated by the infinite 
and by the infinitesimal. 

Further, this vast whole exists in the ceaseless activity of 
ordered change. Its state to-day is not its state of yesterday, 
nor its state for to-morrow. And the changes which take place 
throughout the whole are coordinated. Moreover, as the doctrine 
of evolution proclaims, "they tend in a definite direction."^ 
The systematic relation of the whole is not interrupted, 
but is maintained in and through unceasing and universal 
change. 

Finally, this evolving system presents countless means for 
the attainment of ends. The interpretation of this fact is a 
subject of dispute, and will be the main object of the present 
investigation. Meanwhile, it must be noted that there are 
countless organs and arrangements, at least in animate nature, 
which can only be described and studied as involving at least 
immanent ends. It is clear, for example, that the eye is 
the organ of seeing. The opponents of the existence of final 
causes in nature, or at least of the use of the conception in 
scientific explanation, may seek to rest in the bare assertion, 
"The eye sees," without advancing to the further proposition, 
"The eye is intended for seeing." But, in practical usage, it is 
impossible to maintain the distinction. The comparative 
study of the development of the eye, whether within one 
order of animals or throughout the whole range of animals 
gifted with vision, must depend upon the assumption that 
the end of the eye is seeing, and upon investigation of the 
various ways and the varying degrees in which that end 
is fulfilled. In some cases the end sought is not merely 
immanent in one particular animal or vegetable, but involves 
complex inter-relation, as, for example, in certain instances of 
the fertilization of plants by insects. It is quite possible that 
the progress of natural science may lead to the extension of 
this conception of ends beyond the biological sphere into the 

^ History of European Tlwught in the Nineteenth Century, vol. ii., p. 290. 



302 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

physical. Above all, the conception of evolution involves, as 
will be seen later on, the extension of this conception to the 
order of things as a whole, including both the physical and the 
biological. 

Secondly, the world is apprehended as being thus ordered 
and is utilized by reason. The growth of finite consciousness 
displays a steadily increasing distinction between the ego and 
the non-ego. In proportion as purposive action is developed 
the sense of that distinction is increased. Yet side by side 
with the development of the distinction comes the develop- 
ment of the reason by which the distinction made by activity 
is transcended. Each step of mental development presents 
two aspects, the distinguishing of the rational self from 
nature, and the discovery that the nature which is so distin- 
guished is relative, and in the last resort akin, to the reason 
which apprehends it. Only for such a reason does the world, 
as an ordered whole, exist. The whole impulse to explain it 
depends upon the intuition that the world is reasonable, that 
is to say, that it is governed by laws, arrangements, and 
systematic order, which can be explored and found intelligible 
because they are akin to the mind which searches them out. 
Yet, while at every stage the reason which apprehends and 
explains nature does so upon its own principles, yet these 
principles are not imposed upon nature, but found in nature. 
The conception of law proceeds from the constitution of 
human nature itself. Only as contained in that constitution 
is it fully intelligible, at any rate to human imagination. 
But nature responds to the conception, and exemplifies it 
through all its provinces and processes. The extent to which 
the imaginative realization of what is involved corresponds 
to the reality of things is the subject of this discussion. 
But at least in one sense or other it is clear that man and nature 
are bound together by a common reason, and that no account 
of that common reason can be given except in terms of the 
self-consciousness to which the whole order of things appears or 
is relative. 

Thirdly, the development of this ordered, and therefore 
reasonable, system of things is marked by the successive 
introduction of higher forms of existence, exemplifying a 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 303 

more complex organization, and seeking higher ends. Roughly 
speaking, existence, as we see it, falls into three great 
provinces — the physical, the living, the self-conscious. It is 
possible that the advance of science may, in some respects, 
soften the sharpness of these distinctions. And in two ways. 
The influence of the physical upon the living and the self- 
conscious has been set forth by natural science and emphasized 
by materialism. But, on the other hand, if the importance of 
the physical conditions of higher existence has been main- 
tained, there are many signs that the reverse process is 
taking place, and that dawning gleams which are prophetic 
both of life and of self-consciousness, may be found in physical 
phenomena, where in the past men were satisfied with a 
purely mechanical explanation. Yet, however this twofold 
interpretation may be established, the broad distinctions 
remain. Within the realm of the physical we are concerned 
with the constitution, infinitely varied and complex, of atoms, 
molecules, crystals, and the like, where the action of mechan- 
ical forces is all that can be clearly discerned. In the living 
there is the growing prominence of what may be called a 
subjective center, which has power to receive and to react upon 
the stimuli received from without; and to do so not merely be- 
cause of the presence of purely mechanical forces, but in 
fulfillment of ends contained within its own constitution. At 
the summit of the living appears the self-conscious, containing 
within itself as extensive a variety and as many degrees of 
development as are manifest in the lower forms of life. Each 
of these higher provinces subsumes and is served by the lower. 
Attraction and repulsion are the forms of relationship which 
are manifest in the lowest. The reception of, and response to, 
stimulus marks vegetable life, while sentience, appetite, and in- 
stinct make their appearance in animal life. When self- 
consciousness is reached, it is marked by deliberate choice; 
by the growth of memory as the indispensable means of 
physical survival and progress; and, above all, by power to 
overrule the senses and the appetites by ends which are deemed 
greater in their intrinsic value, and of higher authority to 
command the will. 

Hence, fourthly, the world takes a new beginning with man. 



304 THE CHRISTIAN" RELIGION 

He is animal, yet he drops tlie instinctive equipment which 
regulates and protects the lower animals, and substitutes for 
the most part the conscious pursuit of ends blindly fulfilled 
elsewhere. He becomes, judged from the animal standpoint, the 
most defenseless of the animals. But side by side with his 
animal helplessness there is found the growth of the intelligent 
will, by means of which all the antecedent probabilities of the 
struggle for existence are triumphantly reversed. He gains his 
animal safety by a process which leads him to transcend and 
to subdue the merely animal in the pursuit of higher ends. 
He creates civilization. In that process he comes to 
spiritualize that which is natural; to treat the natural as 
the means to the ideal pursuits of truth, beauty, and goodness. 
If there be any physical explanation of this he is unconscious 
of it. To become conscious of it would defeat instead of pro- 
moting the ends for which he lives; would drag him down 
to a realm of considerations which the wise man, the artist, the 
philanthropist, the hero, and the saint agree in declaring 
to be unworthy of consideration in comparison with their 
ideal ends. For these ends the higher man lives, and for 
their realization he gladly sacrifices, though often not 
without struggle and temptation, the lower promptings of merely 
physical existence. 

Fifthly, man, attaining to this ideal existence of civiliza- 
tion is religious. 1 He conceives that he is in fellowship with 
God, and has the sense of dependence upon, and of obligation 
to, God. He searches for the substantial as against the world 
of mere appearances, for the eternal as contrasted with the 
fleeting, for the ideal in opposition to the actual, and for the 
infinite as beyond the narrow limits and the inadequate 
satisfaction of even the sum-total of finite experience. He 
looks to the Divine as the power which must and will redeem 
him from the thralldom of the lower in order that he may 
enter into the fullness of this spiritual inheritance. He seeks 
so to become the son of the Divine as to be delivered from him- 
self and to be made an heir of the spiritual and eternal. All 



> It is not, of course, intended that every man is so, at least, in any ade- 
quate sense of the term, but that religion represents a characteristic attitude 
of mankind. 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 305 

religions, according to the measure of their worth, as has already 
been seen, have expressed all these needs, and represented their 
satisfaction. This has been perfectly the case in the Christian 
religion, and in the characteristic consciousness which has 
attended it. 

Sixthly, the whole system thus unfolded is fulfilled in and 
mediated by Christ. Our preceding conclusions as to the place 
and meaning of the Christian religion entitle us to affirm 
this. Christ is by all confession the personality of history. 
In fulfilling the idea of religion, and inspiring the new re- 
ligious life in the world. He has immeasurably advanced all 
the other interests of mankind. The history of civilization 
shows, notwithstanding the drawbacks due to the stupidity and 
unfaithfulness of men, the quickening touch of the Christian 
consciousness upon all the interests of mankind, not only 
spiritual, but also moral, social, political, and even rational and 
sesthetic. All these elements are essential parts of the world 
that has to be explained. The omission of any one of them 
leaves a result which is less than the whole of the problem, 
which is set. To ordinary consciousness each is entitled to equal 
consideration with the rest. Those who seek, under a philo- 
sophical or scientific impulse, to unify the whole by a rational 
interpretation must take the greatest care before reducing any 
one of these elements to terms of the others, and espe- 
cially must determine, if any such reduction is possible, to 
which among them priority of worth, meaning, and explanatory 
power belongs. 

Perhaps no serious challenge to this statement will be 
made from any quarter, except to the inclusion of religion, at 
least, in the form which has been suggested. As to this, it 
may be objected that its inclusion assumes the explanation, 
which is sought. The essence of religion, it may be contended, 
lies in the endeavor to explain the world as an ordered 
result by reference to a personal and intelligent cause, con- 
ceived after the manner of a man. The answer to this 
objection is that the theoretic discovery of a cause, adequate 
to the creation of the world, or to the production of the changes 
which are manifest in its history, is but a subordinate part of 
religion. The essential feature of religion in its highest and 



306 THE CHHISTIAN RELIGION 

most representative forms is the — at least fancied — conscious- 
ness of immediate relations involving fellowship, dependence, 
and responsibility with a divine person or persons made 
manifest to the higher spiritual faculties. It may be further 
objected that such alleged consciousness has exhibited such 
varieties, contradictions, and irrational superstitions that it 
has dismissed itself from practical consideration as a phenom- 
enon representing the ultimate truth of reality. The answer 
to this objection has again been supplied by our previous 
inquiry. In its course we have seen what are the common 
elements included in all religions, and what are the limiting 
conditions in the varying tjrpes of human consciousness, the 
different stages of development, and the different kinds of 
experience which have resulted in such varying types of 
articulated religion. 

Above all, it has been seen how, in the case of the one 
religion — Christianity — which can claim to be final, and 
can hope to become universal, exactly the same principles of 
ordered development and of vitality have been made manifest 
in its growth and influence which are found in the case of 
those powers of the mind which are commonly assumed to 
be trustworthy. The development of religion as revealed to 
us in the Old Testament and in the New is not a chaos, but is 
as clearly governed by laws of rational development as is the 
case in any other department of being, life, or thought. If 
evolution be taken to be the watchword of a rational explana- 
tion of the world, then the Christian religion presents itself as 
the supreme and most influential example of such evolution. 
To dismiss the patient consideration of it in this light, because 
of the superstitions and varieties of religion elsewhere, is to be 
guilty of a carelessness as to facts and distinctions which is a 
flagrant contradiction to the true scientific spirit. There is 
the less excuse for this in the case of an evolutionist, because 
the very nature of his special studies has revealed to him the 
highly specialized conditions which are necessary to the pro- 
duction of any highly developed form of life, and the way in 
which a limited development in other directions is obtained 
by the exclusion of the peculiar excellence to be found only 
in the highest and most select forms of life. It is therefore 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 307 

in the highest degree reasonable to insist that any complete ex- 
planation of the world must take sympathetic account of so 
noteworthy a phenomenon of history as that of religion, especially 
the unfolding of the spiritual consciousness in Hebrew religion, 
in Christ, and in historic Christianity, with its achievement 
and still further promise of world-wide expansion and 
supremacy. 

When all these elements are taken into account, they lead 
naturally to a theistic explanation. The appearance of finite 
personality, its position in the world, its rich, many-sided, 
and ideal development, in apparent independence of merely 
material necessity or advantage, press home the supremacy of 
a divine and universal reason as its source. And the weight of 
this presumption is corroborated by the testimony of religious 
experience, together with its spiritual, moral, and secular 
results. 

It only remains for those who feel the force of these 
spiritual factors to leave to philosophic theology the task of 
developing a satisfactory doctrine of the Godhead thus revealed 
in spiritual consciousness, of His relationship to the universe 
and to finite selves, and of the divine end which is being 
realized in man and in the world. Speaking broadly, it may 
be contended that there is a connected development between 
the spiritual intuition of God, the consciousness of the impor- 
tance and worth in the world of human self-consciousness, 
the recognition of the legitimate authority of the ideal ends of 
life and that of the universal prevalence of natural order. So 
far from the first three of these elements being unfavorable 
to the last, they are, on the contrary, its highest support and 
its completest explanation; though, of course, it must be ad- 
mitted that an uninstructed Theism has too often damaged its 
own case by seeking the evidence of the divine personality in 
the breach rather than in the upholding of the order which it 
lays down. 

But another course may be pursued. The world presented 
to perception appears to common sense as external to, and 
independent of, the percipient. Especially is this the case 
because it appears as an object common to all who perceive 
it, and therefore independent of any of them. This hardened 



308 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

appearance of externality and materiality is necessary at a 
certain stage of mental development, and for the ordinary 
purposes of practical life. It is the condition of self -distinction 
and self-development. It promotes that instrumental use of 
nature out of which all the practical arts of life arise. 
Natural science in its origin and temper stands in the closest 
connection with common sense, for common sense presents the 
world which science investigates, and pursues those practical 
concerns of life out of which scientific interest arose, and the 
satisfaction of which it at least incidentally serves. Moreover, 
the instruments of scientific advance, whether mathematical, 
covering all the operations of numbering and measuring, or 
experimental, interrogating outward things by isolating and 
adapting them, lend themselves to this standpoint of ordinary 
perception and emphasize it. 

The primary sphere of scientific inquiry may, therefore, 
be defined as being things in their material objectivity and 
in their mutual relations. The problem only gradually dis- 
engages itself from the utilitarian ends of life and becomes 
purely theoretic. In this process science is driven from the 
easy-going assumptions of ordinary perception and conmion 
sense, and finds it increasingly diflScult to answer the two ques- 
tions, namely: What is a thing? and, What is the meaning of 
the relationships into which it enters? But while the course 
of its inquiries drives natural science farther and farther 
towards the realm of metaphysical discussion, its problem is 
always set to it by the appearance of phenomena as a 
multiplicity of things bound together in a complicated net- 
work of relations. 

For natural science, therefore, man becomes the selfless ob- 
server of an apparently independent system of things which con- 
stitutes the world. His distinctive problem is to secure a finally 
satisfactory description of things, and an explanation by means 
of the category of causality of the coordinated changes through 
which they pass. 

It is not intended to deny the legitimacy or usefulness of 
this point of view, or of the methods which are implied by 
it, so far as the purposes of physical inquiry are concerned. 
It is perfectly possible to combine them with Theism in one 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 309 

of two ways. It may be done by reviewing the initial 
assumptions, the process, and the final results of scientific 
inquiry in the light of philosophy, with a view to establishing 
the legitimacy of a theistic explanation of the whole. Of, 
short of attaining to this philosophical point of view, a 
theological explanation may be introduced at some stage 
of the scientific inquiry. This latter is the usual resort of 
scientific inquirers, who are religious, but not metaphysical. 
Such inquirers usually either assert the conclusions of faith 
as subjective impressions borne in upon the mind, which are 
entitled to a hearing although they cannot produce strictly 
rational justification; or they select some special point, or 
points, in the evolution of the world at which it becomes 
necessary to call in the assistance of a divine Creator or Artificer. 
That point may be the initial production of matter, or the giving 
to it the first impulse which endowed it with motion. Or it 
may be held that such interference was necessary in order to 
arrange the collocations of the various elements of matter and 
their combinations. By some the introduction of life, and, above 
all, the production of man, are singled out as needing a direct 
and peculiar intervention of divine activity from without. 
Finally, the necessity of a miraculous revelation supplied for 
the guidance of self-conscious beings, produced by a purely 
natural order of development, may be insisted upon. At one, 
or all, of these points religion may modify the naturalist point 
of view, not by subjecting it to general metaphysical criticism, 
but by the use of the categories of physical explanation them- 
selves, or by reference to the ordinary experience of the world, 
especially including the volitional activity of man presented to 
common sense. 

Our immediate concern is not, however, with the scientific 
justification of such a procedure, or with the philosophic 
validity of the way in which it is carried out. It is with 
those scientific inquirers who contend that the final explana- 
tion of all things is contained in natural science, understood 
as dynamics; and that what cannot be so explained by 
measurement of size and weight and calculation of djTiamic 
forces, is either incapable or unworthy of any further explana- 
tion. Such a temper leaves entirely out of account the 



310 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

relativity of all things perceived, perceptible, or imaginable, 
to consciousness; and depreciates, not merely for the purposes 
of scientific investigation, but absolutely, the importance of 
selfhood in the universe. It boldly challenges the sovereignty 
of the spiritual, and reduces reason, conscience, and religious 
aspiration, either to the result of material conditions, or to an 
inoperative shadow attending those conditions. For it, the 
testimony of religion, including Christianity, is that of a 
malevolent or benevolent superstition, according to particular 
circumstances — for example, the variety of the religion or the 
stage of human development — or, ignoring all these distinctions, 
according to the bias of the inquirer. Even here qualifications 
must be made. This attitude of thorough-going naturalism 
may be fitful. It is possible to maintain it throughout the 
whole course of scientific inquiry and exposition, and to 
brandish its assumptions in defence of the scientific position 
with the vigorous enjoyment of a savage clubman, and yet, 
at the end of it all, some frank confession may retrocede 
the whole ground so aggressively occupied in the scientific 
campaign. 

'Further, it must be borne in mind that the representative 
attitude of the most recent and representative men of science 
shows a remarkable growth in humility as compared with 
that occupied a generation ago. In evidence of this the 
address of Professor G. H. Darwin at the British Association 
of 1905 may be quoted. "We have seen,'' he says, "that it is 
possible to trace the solar system back to a primitive nebula 
with some degree of confidence, and that there is reason to 
believe that the stars in general have originated in the same 
manner. But such primitive nebulae stand in as much need 
of explanation as their stellar offspring. Thus, even if we 
grant the exact truth of these theories, the advance towards 
an explanation of the universe remains miserably slight. 
Man is but a microscopic being relatively to astronomical 
space, and he lives on a puny planet circling round a star of 
inferior rank. Does it not then seem as futile to imagine 
that he can discover the origin and tendency of the universe, 
as to expect a housefly to instruct us as to the motions of 
the planets? And yet, so long as he shall last, he shall 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATUBALISM 311 

pursue the search, and will no doubt discover many wonderful 
things which are still hidden. We may, indeed, be amazed at 
all that man has been able to find out; but the immeasurable 
magnitude of the undiscovered will remain through all time to 
humble his pride. Our children's children will still be gazing 
and marveling at the starry heavens, but the riddle will never 
be read." 

The growth of this more modest attitude is due in part to 
reaction after the self-confidence which attended the remarkable 
scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century; in part to 
the effect that has been produced by the criticism and 
modification even of those great discoveries by later scientific 
inquiry. Above all, it has been brought about by a deeper 
reflection, giving a more sympathetic hearing to criticisms 
which emanate from metaphysical and even from theological 
quarters. 

At the same time, the purely naturalist point of view is still 
strong and confident. For those who hold it, the first concern 
is to secure the presentation of things in their bare objectivity 
and materiality, as the only sphere not only of scientific inquiry, 
but also of ultimate reality. 

1. In order to this there comes first the expulsion of final 
causes from the world of reality. Final causes are almost 
universally held to imply purpose, will, and directive in- 
telligence. If admitted, therefore, they indicate the existence 
and influence of divine personality. They are conceived by 
those who deny them to be external to nature, and therefore 
to be superimposed upon it from without. But the system 
of things is supposed to be a rounded whole complete in 
itself. Therefore, not only is such alleged outside influence 
excluded from the purview of science, which regards the 
world as a self-contained whole, but it is excluded from the 
possibility of knowledge which has no means of proving 
the existence of such influence. Hence final causes have 
probably no place in reality. The modern attack upon them 
was led by Spinoza, who based his opposition primarily upon 
quasi-theological grounds. His investigation of the nature 
of God in his Ethics left no possibility of purpose, for 
according to him, God, who exists and acts out of the sole 



312 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

necessity of His own nature, predetermines all things, not out 
of freedom of choice, or of His good pleasure, not with under- 
standing, or even with consciousness, but by reason of a 
natural necessity. This necessity results in the manifesta- 
tion of the one self-existing Substance in the two parallel, 
but mutually independent, forms of extension and conscious 
intelligence. 

The world of extension and that of finite self-conscious- 
ness proceeding necessarily from the divine Substance and 
being irreducible one to the other, there is no room for 
the attribution of purpose to the divine Substance, seeing 
that the consciousness of purpose belongs only to intelligence 
as a finite and phenomenal attribute. Moreover, even if 
it were theoretically possible to attribute purpose to the 
divine Substance, a spiritual reason would, according to 
Spinoza, forbid this being done. For to attribute purpose 
to God and the creation of means for its accomplishment 
is to suppose that there is a need in the nature of God which 
demands satisfaction, and this is contrary to the divine 
perfection. 

Indeed, the very imagination of final causes, he contends, 
is due to an illusion. Men suppose themselves to be free, 
and always act with a view to some desired end. Hence 
they come to believe that the end of their desires is in itself 
the cause of their actions. Further, as they discover both 
within and outside themselves, many means of benefit to 
themselves, as, for example, their bodily organs and the food 
which nourishes them, they conceive that these were divinely 
produced with a view to their well-being, and in order that 
the gods who produced them might receive the gratitude and 
worship of mankind. The principle being thus accepted, is 
immediately extended, for if there are natural causes of 
benefit to men, there are also causes of injury, as, for example, 
storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc. It follows that these must 
be the result of divine displeasure. Hence the attribution 
of final causes becomes the refuge of ignorance. "VAHierever 
knowledge of efficient causes fails men assume the fulfillment 
of a supposed purpose as an explanation. Moreover, they 
naturally make their own organs and dispositions the standard 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 313 

of existence, judging things to be good or bad according as they 
are agreeable or disagreeable to themselves.^ 

All the objections thus urged by Spinoza have had a 
measure of weight with those who reject final causes as 
having no place in the universe. In the main, however, 
there have been two operative considerations which have led to 
this rejection. In the first place, it has been held that there 
is an opposition between the principle of Final Causes and 
that of Efficient Causation. The latter has been conceived 
as determinative within the facts themselves, while the 
former must, in the nature of the case, be outside the things 
themselves, and therefore be inoperative. As a matter of 
fact, they exist only in the imagination of men, and are pro- 
jected thence into the world of nature by reason of a false 
analogy set up between man's acts as apparently purposive, 
and the events which happen in the world. Secondly, how- 
ever this may be, the discovery of Final Causes is held 
to be outside the range of science, which is limited to the 
task of discovering, measuring, and describing the antecedents 
and consequents throughout the whole range of universal 
physical causation. 

2. What is left when Final Causes have been expelled con- 
sists of Matter and Motion. These may, indeed, not be treated 
as self-explanatory. Such blank materialism has long been put 
out of court. Modern thought prefers to treat them as the 
manifestations to sense of an unknown Substance, which is 
revealed, not only in matter and motion, but also in the finite 
consciousness which attends matter in certain complex forms of 
organization. But while this is nominally the case, for all 
practical purposes, matter and motion are frequently treated 
as the only trustworthy materials for a scientific explanation 
of the world. Hence, practically, the attitude taken up by 
Professor Tyndall in his celebrated Belfast address remains 
unchanged. The final reservation of the naturalistic philosopher, 
however, gives him all the practical advantages of materialism 
without encountering its speculative inconvenience, or even 
absurdity. 

What then is matter? As defined by the metaphysicians 

1 Spinoza, Ethics, Part I., Appendix. 



314 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of the past it possessed two groups of qualities, the primary 
and the secondary. The primary qualities included extension 
in space, weight and resistance to pressure. The secondary 
qualities included color, scent, etc., which were speedily 
discovered to depend in a peculiar degree upon the faculties 
of the percipient as well as upon the qualities of the percept. 
These secondary qualities have since been resolved into 
effects produced upon the consciousness by modes of motion, 
emanating from objects and affecting the sensory apparatus 
of man. Thus certain of the qualities which common sense 
attributes to matter have been transferred by modern science 
to motion. 

Matter, therefore, is what occupies space and resists pressure. 
It can be divided mechanically or disintegrated chemically. 
Hence, the problem of its ultimate constitution is raised. The 
progress of physical and chemical science, and the application 
to them of mathematics, have produced the atomic and molec- 
ular theories of the constitution of matter, the molecule being 
defined as the least possible particle of a composite body, whose 
parts are held together by chemical affinity, the atom being 
the infinitesimal and primary particle of each of the supposed 
distinct chemical elements entering into combination. But 
the speculations of science have not ended here. Within 
the atom the electron is now conceived to exist. The 
primary atom itself is supposed to be as highly organized 
a body as a planetary system, and the doctrine of the 
survival of the fittest has been extended from forms of 
life and systems of worlds, not only to molecules, but to atoms 
themselves. Indeed the vista opened before us by the 
material universe is one of infinite extension throughout space, 
and of infinite subdivision into imperceptible parts, each kind 
being a special modification of the infinite and universally 
diffused ether. 

Again, matter appears to ordinary observation in two 
states, at rest and in motion. As this motion is investigated 
it appears to be governed by systematic laws which express 
the working of natural forces. In the stellar systems attrac- 
tion and gravitation are the names of forces by which the 
motions of heavenly bodies are regulated. In the world 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 315 

of chemistry, affinity; in that of physics, attraction and 
repulsion represent the forces which have to be measured 
and described. While, therefore, motion as commonly per- 
ceptible has opened up immense fields of scientific inquiry, 
the pursuit of that inquiry has shown how untrustworthy 
is the ordinarj^ supposition that bodies are at rest unless 
moved from without. Not merely may motion pass into 
apparent rest, but rest may pass into motion if the conditions, 
physical or mechanical, be suitable. Nay, more, the dis- 
coveries as to color, sound, and heat — to say nothing of 
electricity — ^have shown that bodies supposed to be at rest 
are really in violent internal motion. The pressure of gases 
is explained as due to the combined motions of the minutest 
particles. In this way science has been led to the conclusion 
that while any particular body may be at rest in the sense of 
holding an unchanged relation to outside bodies, there is no 
such thing as a body at rest so far as the action of its constituent 
atoms is concerned. Every atom, indeed, is a composite system 
of matter in ordered and ceaseless motion. Until recently it 
was supposed that atoms were indestructible. The conclusion, 
however, that they are composite bodies has shifted the attribute 
of indestructibility from them to the elements of which they are 
composed. 

What, then, is matter? It becomes increasingly difficult 
to decide. If the impressions of ordinary common sense are 
upheld, it is that ultimate inert body which resists motion, but 
is impelled to it by force. On this line of thought it becomes 
ultimately resolved away into a mere force-point, the center 
to which and from which forces are directed. On the other 
hand, aU that is effected by force may be transferred to 
matter as its ultimate cause, and when this is done matter 
contains, as Professor Tyndall said, "the promise and potency" 
of all that is, because it has been definitely endowed with that 
promise and potency by the exercise of imagination. Ultimately 
regarded, in short, the distinction between matter and motion 
is an abstract one ; it exists in thought, but can never be reached 
in reality. Inert matter can never be discovered, nor can 
motion be even conceived as distinct from some body that 
is in motion. 



316 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

Motion in itself represents simply the variation of external 
spatial relations between different bodies. Such variations 
must be conceived as the result of causes. Such causes turn 
out to be capable of observation, description, and measurement. 
They are therefore called forces. But forces are not always 
apparently in activity. They may be latent, even for vast 
periods, awaiting suitable physical conditions for their activity. 
Moreover, as recent investigation has shown, one kind of force 
can be transmuted into another; indeed, all are under certain 
conditions interchangeable. For these reasons the conception 
of forces as the cause of motion has given place to that 
of energy as the universal, indestructible, now latent, now 
active cause of the systems of motion which prevail 
throughout the material world and by which its organization 
is explained. 

Within this world of matter in ceaseless and systematic 
motion there appears the phenomenon of life, with its organiza- 
tion, its power of receiving and responding to stimulus from 
without by something other than a mechanical resultant or 
a chemical reaction. Its essence has hitherto proved in- 
definable, its origin inexplicable. It is accompanied by, and is 
often treated as the result of physical organization. In that 
physical organization, the laws of chemical combination and 
of djmamics are maintained. By many it has been supposed 
that a vital principle is necessary for the explanation of life. 
Those, however, who seek to interpret the universe in terms of 
matter in motion forecast the time when they will be able to 
demonstrate that life is the natural and necessary result of a 
peculiar collocation of matter, and that it originated from the 
non-living under highly favorable physical conditions, the pos- 
sibility of which has now perhaps for ever passed away. The 
scientific explanation of the world in terms of matter and motion 
depends for its ultimate possibility upon the truth of this 
confident prediction. 

But the forms of animal life are conscious, and the highest 
form of animal life known to us, namely man, is self-conscious. 
The gap between the conscious and the unconscious is even 
greater than that between the living and the non-living, 
although in the advance from the lower to the higher there is 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 317 

apparent a steadily increasing complexity of physical organi- 
zation corresponding to the advance in vital, and above all 
in conscious power. Hence this complexity of physical organi- 
zation is treated as being in itself the explanation of the con- 
sciousness which accompanies it, and which varies according 
to the complexity and delicacy of the nervous organization. 
Yet, however this may be, consciousness is by all confession 
irreducible to physical terms. It is not convertible into 
terms of matter and motion in themselves, even if a particular 
condition of matter and motion is essential to its existence 
and determinative of its activity. Indeed, it is conceived 
to be equally impossible for a physiological state of matter in 
motion to be the cause of consciousness and for a conscious state 
in itself to break in upon the regular succession of 
physical causes and effects. The impression that our thoughts 
and purposes have this power is due to a human illusion. 
Hence the view of nature which explains it entirely in terms 
of matter and motion is completed in the doctrine of "psycho- 
physical parallelism,'^ which treats the psychological or self- 
conscious side as an epiphenomenon, the inoperative subjective 
state which invariably accompanies certain determinative 
physical conditions. 

With the denial of the practical power of consciousness — ^its 
thoughts, purposes, sense of freedom, religion, affection — ^the 
whole world created by the human mind is divorced from practi- 
cal influence upon the course of the universe, becoming reducible 
to the mere concomitants of biological conditions, which again, 
as has been seen, are reducible to physics. 

3. The universe of matter in motion has, however, not 
always possessed its present form. On the contrary, taken as 
a whole, it is passing through continuous change. The 
evidences of such change have always appealed to thoughtful 
observers from the time when Heraclitus uttered his famous 
dictum that "all things are in a state of flux" (Travra pet). In 
modem times, however, every field of scientific observation, 
including physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, has multi- 
plied evidences of this fact. Above all, biology and the 
sciences concerned with man have borne concurrent testimony 
to it. The advance of modem inquiry has steadily broken 



318 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

down the hard-and-fast distinction of types which until recent 
times was accepted as evidence of distinct and separate 
creative acts. The process began with the biological dis- 
coveries which culminated in the publication of Darwin's 
Origin of Species, It was extended by the advance of geology, 
with its explanation of the phenomena of stratification by 
the operation through prehistoric times of forces still actively 
at work. The hypothesis of La Place had already sub- 
stantially assumed it in regard to the history of the planetary 
systems. By means of the Spectrum Analysis the great 
discovery was made that the same chemical elements which 
are found on the earth are present as constituents of the 
heavenly bodies, and that they are subject to the same general 
physical and chemical laws. In more recent times the inde- 
pendence of the supposed chemical elements has given way. 
So far as these still appear to be original, their differences are 
conceived to be simply due to differences in the complexity of 
their atomic constitution, not to any differences in the actual 
material of the atoms themselves. The whole present state of 
the material universe is conceived to be the result of special 
modifications of the underlying ether diffused throughout the 
whole of space. 

Thus, the material of the universe is entirely homogeneous, 
and represents various stages and degrees of organization due 
to continuous changes in the disposition of its material particles 
brought about by changes of motion. These changes have been 
and are due to gradual processes which have operated through 
a practically unlimited past. They are also systematic, result- 
ing from unchanging laws of activity, affecting universal matter 
in that correlation of its parts which naturally arises from the 
unity of the primary substance that underlies all change. The 
differentiations which have taken place in the organization of 
matter, and have resulted in the present constitution of 
the universe, are assumed, and not explained by the sup- 
position of a primitive material substratum acted on by an 
all-pervading motion. 

Again, this continuous and systematic change has been 
ever towards more complex forms of organization. To use 
Herbert Spencer's famous definition of evolution, the present 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 319 

state of the universe is due to "an integration of matter and con- 
comitant dissipation of motion ; during which the matter passes 
from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes 
a parallel transformation/'^ 

In its highest processes, at least, this change represents a 
constant victory over apparent inertia. The springing up of 
a plant, for example, is the triumph of life over the force of 
gravitation which drags it downwards. The same is true 
of all forms of animal development and activity in which the 
tendency of matter to seek a state of equilibrium is constantly 
disturbed by the action of animal impulse; in the case of man, 
by conscious volition. To explain this continuous change 
brought about by a ceaseless activity, which results in an ever 
more complex physical organization, and is attained by this 
triumph over inertia, the doctrine of Evolution has been 
introduced. 

The conception is biological in its origin. It is suggested by 
the examples of vegetable and animal growth, which to the or- 
dinary observer appear as an ordered unfolding of initial 
potentialities of growth contained within the original organism. 
This principle is extended by analogy from the sphere of 
biology to that of physics, from special phenomena to the universe 
as a whole. 

This general view of evolution presents various alterna- 
tives. Is it due to an inherent tendency eternally present 
within matter itself? Or is it, as the Greek atomists sup- 
posed, due to a chance hit by which the present universe, 
with its particular laws and its power to survive, came into 
existence from amid the infinite possibilities of other worlds, 
otherwise organized? Is the order which we know uni- 
versal, or is it the realization of a cosmos within an out- 
lying chaos? Are there many systems in different stages 
of evolution or decay, or is there only one? Is the uni- 
verse finite, or is it infinite? So far as observation goes, decay 
is the inevitable sequel to evolution. The energy which 
has been available for the purposes of activity and organiza- 
tion gradually becomes exhausted, which means not that it 

J First Principles, 3rd edit., p. 396. 



320 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

is destroyed, but that it becomes unavailable for work — a victim, 
if the expression may be allowed, of that dissipation of energy 
which evolution successfully overcomes. Are then periods of 
evolution and decay cyclical, or has the whole universe started 
from one beginning, and is it tending to universal and final 
decay? If the former, what is the cause of the new start which 
periodically takes place? If the latter, had the universe a 
beginning in time ? What set the process of evolution in motion ? 
What, in short, are its original factors, and what, if any, their 
explanation ? 

All these are questions which have been answered in various 
ways, and which seem incapable of final settlement by any 
merely physical evidence. However they may be answered, 
care is taken by those whose view is now being presented to 
exclude any conception of prevision, design, and effective will- 
power in originating the whole system or guiding it to its 
appointed ends. In dispensing with any such conceptions, 
the discovery by Darwin of what is called the principle of 
"Natural Selection" is supposed to be of the highest service. 
The term stands for the supposed accidental^ appearance of 
variations in living forms, which enter into a struggle for ex- 
istence, in which the victory goes to the fittest, namely, to those 
which are the most completely equipped to take advantage of 
their environment; the rest gradually perishing or surviving 
only under subordinate conditions of existence. This principle, 
applied in the first place only to the phenomena of life, 
has been gradually extended, as has been seen, to the 
domain of physics, reaching on the one hand to planetary 
systems, and descending on the other, not only to molecules, but 
even to atoms. 

The limitations of the doctrine of evolution are immedi- 
ately apparent. The principle of natural selection, however 
widely it may be applied, may explain the persistence of any 
form of organized matter when it has been produced, but 
does nothing to explain its original appearance. In the 
second place, while the principle may account for the issue of 



* To the word "accidental" various meanings may be attached. Generally, 
however, it will be understood as excluding conscious purpose in the appearance 
of particular variations. 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 331 

the conflict between particular forms of physical organization 
and of living organisms, it provides no explanation of the uni- 
verse as a whole. The survival of the fittest takes place after a 
competition between kinds with varying degrees of adaptation to 
their environment. But there is no environment to the universe 
as a whole, nor, whatever may be the possibilities open to abstract 
speculation, is there the slightest evidence of a competition 
between universes for existence. 

Thus, the conception of evolution, while it may suggest an 
infinite number of experiments within the sphere of the universe, 
gives no explanation of that which led to the initiation of such 
experiments, of the material with which such experiments were 
made, and, above all, of the tendency prevailing throughout 
the universe to an ever more complex and highly elaborated 
system. 

4. At this stage Agnosticism comes in to complete the 
point of view which is here being described. The original 
motive for such agnosticism is the fact that science, as such, 
is brought, as has been seen, to a dead stand when it 
approaches the ultimate problem of the origin and explana- 
tion of the universe. Evolution is simply an attempt to 
describe a process which has gone on in the world. Assum- 
ing that the whole world is the result of material organization; 
that matter exists, and that it is acted upon by those physical 
forces whose mode of working physical science investigates; 
assuming also that the highest consciousness is the result 
or the concomitant of material organization, the ultimate 
questions, what is matter? whence is it? and what is the 
explanation of its laws? are insoluble by science according 
to all confession. The only way out of the difficulty is to 
deny that they need solution, to treat them as self-explain- 
ing. This is done by the upholders of what may be called 
^'materialistic Monism.^' But it does not represent the most 
widely current view of scientific men; witness, for example, 
the quotation given above from Professor G. H. Darwin. 
Sir Isaac Newton could measure and describe the force of 
gravitation, but what gravitation itself is, and, still more, 
why it is, neither he nor any one else has ventured to say. 
To lay down that it is an inherent property of matter is only 



322 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

to tell US what we already know, but why it should be this 
rather than that it is impossible to say. Hence all such 
questions are excluded from the purview of science, now that 
it has frankly abandoned the cruder materialism of the 
eighteenth century. Its task is limited to describing 
things as they are, it being assumed that this task can be 
completed without any knowledge of what, whence, and why 
they are. Yet while this manifest inability of science to 
offer a complete explanation is admitted, and while the 
material universe is treated by most as not beiag self- 
explanatory, resort is made to metaphysics — a subject which 
for other purposes is decried — iQ order to shift the responsi- 
bility of this incapacity upon the constitution of the human 
mind itself. 

It is true that the inability of science to explain the 
universe is not always treated as dependent upon the con- 
stitution of all finite miad in itself. In Professor G. H. 
Darwin's address, for example, it is implied that this inability 
arises from the fact that man is a microscopic creature ia a 
practically infinite universe, and that he is placed upon a 
planet which is inconveniently situated for the purposes of 
observation. Such difficulties naturally suggest themselves 
to an astronomer, but it is impossible to conceive that man's 
chance of solving the real problem would be affected by an 
increase in his physical bulk or by any transportation through 
space to a better equipped observatory. Increased powers 
of observation he might have were his sensory organs more 
powerful, and his position in the universe more central. 
Even increased power of calculation might attend this enlarged 
perceptive power. But the difficulty of explaining the universe 
arises from altogether different causes, and would not be 
diminished if his perception of it in its material aspects were 
made complete. 

A charge has been brought against man's sense-equipment 
by Mr. Balfour, in his Presidential Address to the British 
Association.^ Having broadly traced the different conceptions 
which have succeeded one another as to the nature of matter 
and the constitution of the physical universe, down to the 

1 Proceedings, 1904, and separately published. 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 323 

most recent speculation that the world, as we perceive it, is 
simply a modification of electricity, Mr. Balfour proceeded to 
turn the limitation of our sense-faculties into an indictment 
against them, and to use their apparent untrustworthiness as 
suggesting a doubt as to the adequacy and validity even of 
the highest faculties of the mind. He attributed this untrust- 
worthiness to the fact that these faculties have been produced 
by natural selection. "The blind forces of natural selection,'^ 
he said, "which so admirably simulate design when they are 
providing for a present need, possess no power of prevision, 
and could never, except by accident, have endowed mankind 
while in the making with a physiological or mental outfit 
adapted to the higher physical investigations. So far as 
natural science can tell us, every quality of sense or intellect 
which does not help us to fight, to eat, and to bring up 
children, is but a by-product of the qualities which do. Our 
organs of sense-perception were not given us for purposes 
of research; nor was it to aid us in metiag out the heavens 
or dividing the atom that our powers of calculation and 
analysis were evolved from the rudimentary instiacts of the 
animal. It is presumably due to these circumstances that 
the beliefs of all mankind about the material surroundings 
in which it dwells are not only imperfect, but fundamentally 
wrong. It may seem singular that down to, say, five years 
ago, our race has, without exception, lived and died in a 
world of illusions; and that its illusions, or those with which 
we are here alone concerned, have not been about things 
remote or abstract, things transcendental or divine; but 
about what men see and handle, about those plain matters of 
fact among which common sense daily moves with its most 
confident step and most self-satisfied smile. Presumably, 
however, this is either because too direct a vision of physical 
reality was a hindrance, not a help, in the struggle for existence; 
because falsehood was more useful than truth; or else be- 
cause with so imperfect material as living tissue no better 
results could be attained. But, if this conclusion be accepted, 
the consequences extend to other organs of knowledge besides 
those of perception. Not merely the senses, but the intellect, 
must be judged by it; and it is hard to see why evolution, 



324 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

which has so lamentably failed to produce trustworthy instru- 
ments for obtaining the raw material of experience, should be 
credited with a larger measure of success in its provision of the 
physiological arrangements which condition reason in its 
endeavors to turn experience to account.'^ 

The whole force of this indictment rests upon the adverb 
"lamentably." In the first place, it seems gratuitous to attack 
the faculties of man as inadequate, just when it is claimed that 
they have made a great discovery. Especially is it unsatisfactory 
to use the discovery of the intellect to discredit the senaes, 
and when this has been done to use the discredit of the 
senses to throw back upon the intellect which has set them 
right. 

But again, Mr. Balfour points out that the supposed 
deficiency of the senses was presumably brought about 
because too direct a vision of reality was a hindrance, not 
a help, in the struggle for existence. The purpose of nature 
was to fit man for practical living, though, according to the 
other part of the statement, nature did not deny to him 
faculties by which eventually, through his fitness for practical 
living, he might come to give a theoretic explanation of the 
practical conditions under which he lived. This very true 
account is vitiated by the alternative offered, that the slow- 
ness of the process is due to the fact that falsehood was more 
useful than truth, or else that it is accounted for because with 
so imperfect a material as living tissue no better results could 
be obtained. First of all, there is no falsehood. The senses 
reveal to us, for the purposes of practical life, exactly what is 
in nature. There is no falsehood in a man's senses because 
as he sits in his room, in relation to its surrounding objects, 
his faculty of eyesight does not enable him to see the founda- 
tions. For the purposes of living in the room his perception 
is not false, but is true, although it is not exhaustive, like the 
knowledge of God. And in the next place, even supposing 
that with so imperfect a material as living tissue no better 
results could be obtained, the results which are obtained are 
exactly such as are sufficient for man to live the practical life 
by which his faculties are developed. The general question 
may always be asked, '^Whj was not man God?'' But the 



CHBISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 3^5 

asking of it, instead of marking the highest standard of philos- 
ophy, is merely irrational. Why, then, criticize our percep- 
tions because they, like ourselves, have limits? Perception 
is conditioned by the world in relation to which it has to 
play its part. It is reinforced by faculties which enable us 
eventually, as has been seen, to transcend its immediate 
deliverances. But the practical plan upon which human 
faculties are laid out shows us that man is treated by the universe 
to which he belongs as, above all, a practical being, whose 
knowledge is to be gained as his powers of activity are evolved, 
and not as a mere instrument of abstract thought. The general 
limitations, therefore, arising out of man's dependence, are not 
unfriendly to, but in harmony with, the needs and purposes 
of that practical activity by which, above all, his nature is 
to be explained. 

The general argument in support of Agnosticism, while it 
may be incidentally strengthened by such considerations as 
Professor Darwin and Mr. Balfour urge, rests upon a meta- 
physical foundation. It depends, as it is set forth by Herbert 
Spencer, Huxley, and others, upon a twofold inability. 
Firstly, upon the inability of the Source of all things to reveal 
Himself as He is to finite minds. Secondly, on the inability 
of the finite mind to pass beyond the phenomenal, and to 
apprehend underlying reality. The whole question whether 
the Source of all things is knowable hinges upon the two- 
fold question whether what He is is such as can be brought 
within the sphere of knowledge; and secondly, whether the 
faculties of human knowledge are so constituted that they can 
possibly apprehend Him. The two are ultimately one, but the 
former approaches the matter from the standpoint of the 
nature of God, the latter from a criticism of the faculties of 
man. Eoughly speaking, from the former standpoint the 
question is, Can God — supposing Him to exist — ^be conceived 
as He really is? From the latter standpoint the question 
becomes. Is such a God as can be conceived by human faculties 
the real Source and explanation of the universe? This was 
the issue presented by the late Dean Mansel in his celebrated 
Bampton Lecture on The Limits of Religious Thought. His 
argument supplied the material for that of Herbert Spencer 



326 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

in his First Principles, and represents to the present time the 
philosophical position of Agnosticism. God, according to 
Mansel, must be conceived as First Cause, the explanation of 
all that is; as the Absolute, existing above all relations, and 
as the Infinite, exempt from any limitations of any kind. 
But to begin with, these characteristics are mutually con- 
tradictory. If God be First Cause, He is not absolute; for 
to be a cause is to enter into a definite relationship which 
is the contradiction of absoluteness. Moreover, the infinity 
of God implies that He contains within His nature in an 
infinite degree all possible qualities, including those which 
are contradictory to one another. To represent Him as First 
Cause is so to define His relation to the universe, for example, 
as to involve the limitation in that particular direction of His 
infinity. 

The matter becomes worse still as we consider the essential 
nature of knowledge itself. Knowledge in general, and the 
knowledge of God in particular, has four essential features. 
It involves, firstly, a distinction between the subject and the 
object. Whether, therefore, God knows or is known, this in- 
volves a limitation. If He is known, He becomes dis- 
tinguished as the object of knowledge from its subject, 
and this limitation is contrary to His infinity. A similar 
limitation is involved from the opposite side — if He be the 
knower. Secondly, knowledge involves a relation between 
the knower and the known; but the existence of this relation- 
ship is contrary to the absoluteness of God. Thirdly, all 
knowledge, so far as our consciousness goes, involves succes- 
sion and duration in time. But directly any object becomes 
subject to succession in time it is shown to be finite, and this, 
again, is contrary to the nature of God. Fourthly, the knowl- 
edge of God involves that He should be conceived as a 
personality, for only a personality can be the subject of such 
attributes as religion must needs apply to Him. But person- 
ality involves both limitations which are contrary to the 
divine infinity, and relations which are contrary to the divine 
absoluteness. 

Hence there is an inherent contradiction between the 
religious consciousness, its need and affirmations, and the real 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 327 

nature of God. It is hopeless to attempt to lessen this con- 
tradiction, for any such attempt implies that we have the 
material of a real and adequate knowledge at hand by which 
we can correct the errors of the inadequate. But this is not 
even a matter for inquiry, for, as has been seen, the conditions 
of such an adequate knowledge are necessarily beyond our 
reach. It is therefore useless to attempt to correct crudities 
of religious thought in the hope of attaining a satisfactory 
knowledge of Grod, whether the attempt is made by dogmatic 
theology or by rationalism. The result of all such efforts is 
equally open to philosophical criticism with the crudest errors 
of superstition. 

Yet, according to Mansel, the case of religion is by no means 
lost as the result of this incapacity ; on the contrary it is assured. 
God has given to man a revelation, which, while useless for the 
purposes of exact thought and adequate comprehension, has 
regulative value ; that is, it is a guide to practical life. Revela- 
tion is accepted by the faculty of faith, which is totally distinct 
from that of reason, and because of its distinctness can never 
be the object of a successful attack by reason. Hence the 
revelation of the Scriptures, when its real office is understood, 
is secure from the assault of reason. In the first place, reason 
cannot get at it. In the second, any attempt to do so exposes 
reason to exactly the same objections which it has urged against 
revelation. 

It is obvious that general thought, unconcerned with the 
special interests which Mansel was concerned to defend, could 
not rest in his conclusion. It is impossible to conceive a 
revelation, even for regulative purposes, when the very giving 
of it, however inadequate it may be judged from the specu- 
lative standpoint, is contrary to the absoluteness and infinity 
of God, which are held to be essential to His perfection. To 
suppose that God contradicts Himself, even for a regulative 
purpose, involves absurdity upon absurdity; the absurdity of 
the contradictory act in itself, but the prior absurdity that 
the Absolute and the Infinite has set up conditions so incon- 
sistent with itself that this contradiction becomes necessary. 
In the next place, it is impossible to maintain the authority 
of faith apart from reason. The faith which accepts the true 



328 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

revelation is bound at least to distinguish it from all false 
claimants to the position. How is this to be done save by an 
appeal to reason in the last resort? Not only does faith need, 
therefore, to avail itself of reason in distinguishing the claims 
of the Christian religion from all others, but, whatever may be 
the right of the matter, it is liable to be ejected from the 
premises of human life if it cannot give an account of its presence 
upon them which is intelligible to reason. And its power to be 
intelligible to reason depends upon some community of nature 
between the two. Hence, Hansel's arguments in support of 
Christianity have long since crumbled away; while his argu- 
ment proving that adequate knowledge of God is not only 
impossible, but involves radical contradictions in thought, has 
become the basis of the doctrine that God is unknown and un- 
knowable, as this doctrine is presented by Spencer, Huxley, 
and the agnostics. 

The whole contention rests upon the extension to real 
existence of the logical principle that "Omnis determinatio 
est negatio.^' It is further implied that, as Kant laid down, 
there is an absolute distinction between things in themselves 
and phenomena; in short, that the essential quality of things 
in themselves is that they cannot be revealed in phenomena, 
for then would they not cease to be "in themselves"? Yet 
to leave the matter thus would be hopeless, not merely for 
the adequate knowledge of God or of underlying reality, but 
even for the scientific explanation of the world. The most 
obvious necessity in order that the world may be explained 
within scientific limitations is the assumed reality of infinite 
Power. Therefore, in the celebrated reconciliation between 
the claims of science and religion offered by Herbert Spencer 
the following conclusion is reached: "Thus the consciousness 
of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phe- 
nomena, has been growing ever clearer; and must eventually 
be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that on the 
one hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its 
nature transcends intuition and is beyond imagination, is 
the certainty towards which intelligence has from the first 
been progressing. To this conclusion Science inevitably 
arrives as it reaches its confines; while to this conclusion 



CHRISTIANITY AND NATURALISM 329 

Religion is irresistibly driven by criticism. And satisfying as it 
does the demands of the most rigorous logic at the same time 
that it gives the religious sentiment the widest possible sphere 
of action, it is the conclusion we are bound to accept without 
reserve or qualification/'^ 

Or, secondly, if underlying Eeality be not defined as 
Power, it must be understood as Substance; Substance being 
held to be the sufficient reason of all that is, and the whole 
universe being the natural unfolding of its contents. This 
latter is the monistic explanation of Haeckel.^ It sets aside 
Agnosticism, in form at least, by asserting that what appears 
to agnostics to be the problem is when rightly conceived the 
solution. 

The Substance which manifests itself has two aspects, the 
material and the spiritual; each involving the other. There is 
no primacy of the spiritual. On the contrary, practically it is 
the other way. Finite consciousness only makes its appearance 
with the appearance of the living germ, and necessarily ceases 
at the moment of death. According to the development of the 
organism, and especially according to its nervous development, 
is the presence and range of consciousness. Just as the concep- 
tion of an independent spiritual and immortal consciousness is 
disproved by biological science, so the conception of a supreme 
spiritual and purposive being who is Creator of the universe is 
due to an irrational extension of the illusions of human con- 
sciousness to explain the universe. All that really exists is 
Substance, unfolding itself in the twofold form of matter ia 
motion and of the consciousness which accompanies it. The 
former, however, is of chief importance from the scientific point 
of view, since the material aspects of life are alone suited for 
exhaustive scientific investigation, alone yield exact results and 
absolutely determine their accompaniments in consciousness. 
Thus the underl}dng Substance, so far from being the primary 
enigma, is the means of solving the riddle of the universe. 

Our survey of the fundamental positions of what is called 
Naturalism is now complete. 

1 Herbert Spencer, First Principles, p. 108. 

2 Haeckel is himself indebted to Spinoza for the conception. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 

IN criticizing Naturalism it will be well to proceed in the 
reverse order to that in which it has been expounded in the 
previous chapter. 

I. We begin by considering the philosophical position assumed 
by Agnosticism. 

1. At the outset it should be remarked that Agnosticism 
contradicts man's natural instinct of explanation. The history 
of human thought, not only religious but also philosophical, 
shows the habitual transgression of the limits which it is 
now attempted to impose upon it. In transgressing these 
limits men have had no consciousness whatever that they 
were falling into unreason. They have naively used the 
powers revealed in their own consciousness to explain the 
phenomena and the history of the world. In doing so their 
steps have been most certain just where, according to Agnos- 
ticism, they should have been most uncertain. That men 
have pursued this course habitually does not in itself prove 
that they ought to have done so. But at least it is remark- 
able that if the human mind is really as incompetent as is 
supposed it should be compelled instinctively to seek an 
explanation which is beyond its reach, to meet wants which 
are illegitimate, and to present answers to the world-problem 
which, even where they have failed to give intellectual satis- 
faction, have been both supported and opposed in total 
unconsciousness that alike the question asked and the answer 
offered were necessarily absurd. In all other realms of life 
the continuous putting forth of effort in a fixed direction 
reveals an immanent rationality, is inspired by the real needs 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 331 

of life, and leads to the completer discovery of truth and 
the fuller adjustment of life to its environment. Are we to 
suppose that at the highest point of life, namely human 
self-consciousness, and in the intensest and most universal 
exercise of it in the attempt to explain the universe, that 
which is true everywhere else becomes false, and that the 
persistent effort to find a higher and larger environment 
above that of sense represents a total aberration of the human 
mind? The view thus taken is so contrary to all that we 
can observe elsewhere, as well as to the testimony of every 
other intuition and instinct of human nature itself, that it 
at least needs the most careful criticism before it can be 
accepted. 

2. The agnostic position, when it is closely examined, appears 
to be a skillful attempt to secure the practical advantages of 
Materialism while evading its metaphysical difficulties. It starts 
with Power ; it ends with man. But the inscrutable Power which 
it posits as the source of all things manifests itself in matter 
and motion with the ever more complex arrangements that 
matter in motion produces. Man is the last result of 
matter in motion. The spiritual and moral instincts of his 
nature, when they are not explained away as due to illusion, are 
explained as resulting from biological interests.^ These biolog- 
ical interests result from the need of securing the stability of 
the most complex combinations of matter in motion, namely the 
organic. 

Thus at every point the dominant factor in the explana- 
tion is materialist. Matter is the only manifest result of the 
underlying power; it is the key to the characteristic efforts 
of the finally resulting consciousness. Yet, even Professor 
Huxley admitted that the one thing of which we have 
immediate knowledge is not matter, but mind. The whole 
of our perceptions appear to us, and in order so to appear 
must become either direct presentations or representations 
to our own consciousness. Primarily, therefore, all perceptions 
are states of consciousness, whatever else they may be held 
to involve. To ignore the consciousness which is primary 
and coextensive with the whole field of knowledge — for the 

^ See the fundamental i)ositions of Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics. 



332 THE CHRISTIAN KELIGION 

very term has no meaning except for consciousness — and to 
treat that which appears to consciousness as being the cause 
of consciousness itself, is to invert the order of things. It is 
to explain the better known by the less known, the immediate 
by the remote; to turn the result of consciousness into its 
cause. This has been generally recognized as the fundamental 
fault of Materialism, and has led to its abandonment by every 
school of competent thinkers. But Agnosticism, while it seeks 
to evade the unpleasant consequences, is guilty of the same 
fundamental fault. It indeed offers the adjective "inscrutable'^ 
on the altar of religion and philosophy; but it claims the sub- 
stantive "Power" for a frankly materialistic explanation of 
being and life. Inscrutability makes no further appearance till 
the process is complete, and then is again made use of to 
propitiate those interests which have been ignored throughout 
the proceedings. 

3. Agnosticism brings in covertly the very explanations 
it expressly excludes, just so far as it is inconvenient to 
dispense with them. It begins by fencing off the Source and 
explanation of all things as unknown and unknowable, 
because not amenable to any possible categories of human 
thought. But it needs unlimited and underlying power to 
make its scientific explanation of phenomena possible. Hence 
"the unknown and unknowable'' is immediately translated into 
"power" to meet its convenience. If this translation be legiti- 
mate, ultimate reality is neither unknown nor unknowable. 
It is known to exist, it is recognized as underlying Substance, 
and it is treated as power manifest throughout phenomena. 
In the next place, this assumption that the so-called unknown 
and, unknowable is infinite power, not only violates the 
epistemological principles that have been laid down, but is 
in flagrant contradiction with the metaphysical assumptions 
of Agnosticism. God cannot be known, we are told, because 
He is absolute. But underlying power is not absolute. It 
has become relative to that which it underlies. Any attempt 
to escape this conclusion is a mere subterfuge of thought. 
Again, it is supposed that underlying reality is beyond 
knowledge, simply because it is underlying, and therefore 
a "thing in itself." Such a thing in itself is inoperative unless 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 333 

it is manifest in phenomena; but directly it is so manifest it 
ceases to be a thing in itself. Hence the "inscrutable Power^' of 
Agnosticism is either not a thing in itself, and therefore not the 
ultimate reality at all, or it is not a power, in which case it is of 
no use for the practical purpose in hand. 

4. Once more, this conception does not in the slightest 
degree escape from the charge of anthropomorphism which 
is brought against theistic belief. Our conception of power is 
simply an abstraction from our own consciousness of will, and 
of its ability to secure results. "We are conscious of will as the 
determined effecting of purpose in spite of obstacles without 
and of inertia within. This triumph of will, first of all over 
inertia, and then over outward obstacles, is what we mean by 
power. To explain the universe by power, therefore, is simply 
to utilize this experience of our own consciousness, and is as 
plainly anthropomorphic as the most pronounced Theism 
that exists. 

Haeckel, as has been seen, substitutes the conception of 
substance for that of power, and escapes the difficulties which 
drive Agnosticism to make positive affirmations about that 
which is by hypothesis unknown and unknowable, by treating 
the conception of substance as self-explanatory, and every 
further question asked about it as due to the irrational 
exercise of human intellect. There are three difficulties in 
this view of the matter. It appears, to begin with, hazardous 
to assume that so much of the characteristic work of the 
human mind is entirely fallacious, and yet to maintain the 
absolute confidence which Haeckel cherishes in the scientific 
explanation provided by it. If the whole history of human 
thought is marked by fundamental illusion, how shall we be 
certain that any purging process has gone far enough, or even 
— to put the difficulty in an extreme form — avoid the fear that 
the very fact that the human mind thinks anything is a pre- 
sumption that it is not true? This will appear clearer shortly, 
when the derivation of the conception of substance is 
examined. 

In the next place, we are invited by Haeckel to surrender 
the worship of a personal God largely on the ground that the 
universe as it exists is not good enough to be His creation. 



334 THE CHKISTIAN RELIGION 

Yet we are to substitute for the worship of Theism that of 
Pantheism, which finds satisfaction in explaining all things 
by the so-called natural laws of physical science, without 
raising any of the questions hitherto suggested by the spiritual 
and moral intuitions and postulates of mankind. Such a 
worship has the most serious evils. In setting aside the 
higher intuitions and postulates it invites us to be satisfied 
with a poorer universe than they demand. We are to accept 
a universe as naturalistically perfect which, on spiritual grounds, 
is worthy of such condemnation as to render the conception of 
a Supreme Goodness impossible. Further, we dismiss the de- 
mands of the spiritual and moral nature as illusory, in flat 
contradiction to the general principle manifest everywhere else, 
that what has been naturally evolved has meaning and purpose, 
and, therefore, represents truth, although it may be with 
imperfect expression. 

But the third fundamental objection is that the concep- 
tion of substance, unfolding itself in its two aspects, cannot be 
primary. Postponing for a moment the question of its source, 
the universe, as has already been seen, is that which is manifest 
in and to consciousness. The universe stands in an organic 
relation to consciousness, but as a percept it is in a subordinate 
relation. The mind which distinguishes it, in so doing subjects 
it to its own forms of thought. In knowledge, therefore, the 
mental aspect, so far from being subordinate to the material, 
or even parallel with it, holds supremacy. To dethrone mind 
from that supremacy, when passing from the finite experience 
to the explanation of the world as a whole, is to reverse the 
order of things manifest in perception, without having any 
conceivable justification for so doing. At whatever stage of 
the evolution of the world we plant ourselves in imagination, 
that world has no meaning except as a presentation to con- 
sciousness. Could we stand in presence of the earliest 
manifestation of underlying substance in a nascent cosmos, 
it would be still something relative to the human mind, and 
only explicable in terms of it. There can be, therefore, no 
warrant for dispossessing the mind from the position which it 
holds in all actual or imaginable experience, when we come to 
consider the origin of the universe in and by which this 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 335 

experience is brought about. Some conception of reason, 
indeed, is needed which may enable us ultimately to bridge 
the distinctions set up in finite consciousness between the 
mind which perceives and the world which is perceived. But 
the possibility of such a final solution depends upon its being 
consistent with, and not a reversal of, what the whole range of 
human experience unfolds. Hence, illogical and incoherent as it 
is. Agnosticism is a more satisfactory solution than any explana- 
tion that begins by ignoring or reversing the fundamental 
declaration of consciousness which, even if an imperfect instru- 
ment of world-explanation, is all that we possess. 

It is perhaps unnecessary to deal at length with the meta- 
physical difficulties upon which Agnosticism relies, for they 
have been frequently discussed. When it is objected that 
God, as the Absolute and the Infinite, cannot reveal Himself 
without destroying both the one and the other of these 
essential attributes, it is necessary to be on our guard against 
perils of definition and abstraction which beset us on every 
hand. Is God the Absolute and the Infinite? If so, what 
exactly is meant by these terms? To what extent is it true, 
when these terms have been carefully defined, that He cannot 
reveal Himself, and that, therefore, His existence cannot be 
known? All these questions need to be carefully answered. 
As to the first, it is important to remember that the final 
abstractions of human thought are not the first realities in 
actual existence. The conceptions, the Absolute and the 
Infinite, whatever they may be worth, are conceptions of 
thought, representing its last and most abstract analysis. 
But to suppose that the Absolute and the Infinite exists as such 
is to make exactly the same confusion between logical conceptions 
and real existence as is made when it is supposed that pure 
undifferenced being exists. What exists is not pure being, but 
being enriched with the endless attributes of the actual concrete 
world. In the same way, if Theism is true, what exists is 
not a spiritual abstraction called the Absolute and Infinite, 
but an actual divine Being, manifesting those qualities and 
standing in those relations which the careful study of the 
universe reveals. 

Thought will therefore escape from the entanglements 



336 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

involved in abstract conceptions to inquire whether such a 
being as theology postulates is made manifest as existent, 
and how far the conception of His being, attributes, and 
relationships entertained by theology is capable of being 
rationally expressed, so as to be compatible with the whole 
texture of conscious experience. Such an investigation dis- 
poses at once of the supreme dignity of the bare logical 
conceptions of absoluteness and infinity. If by the infinity 
of God is intended that God is absolutely without qualities, 
or is the all-receptive home of contradictories, common sense 
as well as religion refuses homage to so meaningless a con- 
ception. Such a being, if he were possible, could not be 
God, for if there be a God He manifests certain distinctive 
attributes in and through the world of which He is the source 
and explanation. Both religion and thought would prefer to 
have a real God manifest in determinate character, instead of 
a mere empty metaphysical abstraction. The same is true 
of the attribute of absoluteness. Manifold relatedness and 
capacity for relation make the dignity and power of human 
life. To treat God as incapable of such relations honors 
Him by the attribution to Him of what is in itself 
unintelligible, and which even if intelligible would reduce Him 
to complete ineffectiveness. What should be intended by this 
conception is, that God is not dependent upon the world for 
His existence; but that the world is dependent upon Him, 
and that in some sense the world is within His being, and 
not outside it. This, of course, is the ultimate difficulty of a 
completely satisfactory doctrine of God in His relation to the 
world. But it is in regard to the practical problem of the 
inclusiveness of the life of God and yet the independence 
of the life of the creature, that the solution must be wrought 
out, and not with the counters of mere logical abstraction. 
Upon the answer to this question, to be discussed later on, 
will depend in what sense we are to understand that God can 
reveal Himself. 

It must not be supposed from the foregoing criticism that 
the postulates of substance and power are without serious 
metaphysical meaning. Indeed, the present contention is that 
they will be found to contain within them distinct theological 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 337 

implications. It has been seen already that the conception of 
power is subjective in its source. The same thing is true of the 
conception of substance. At first sight it may seem easy to 
postulate the primary and absolute substance, which by a process 
of natural development results in the cosmos, as presented in 
perception, having its two parallel aspects of consciousness and 
extended matter. 

But when we come to consider this conception more closely 
in reflection it becomes clear that it is a pure creation of our 
own thought. It is impossible to reach it by any perception 
which passes beyond its own universal conditions to an 
immediate apprehension of it. Not only is it a creation of 
our own thought, but it is clear whence the material of it is 
derived. In consciousness we have an intuitive sense of self- 
hood as lying at the base of all that is manifest in our 
various mental states, whether of thought, feeling, or volition. 
The deliverance of consciousness is, further, that this self- 
hood is relative equally, and perhaps coextensively, to mental 
and bodily states. The procedure both of Spinoza and of 
Haeckel is to throw out from this primary fact of self- 
consciousness the conception of a similar underlying reality 
within the perceptible universe, and to treat it as the explana- 
tion of all that is relative to it, just as selfhood is the 
explanation of all the manifestations and experiences of our 
conscious life. 

Thus the only material for the conception of substance, 
both as to its nature and as to its very existence, is to be 
found in our consciousness. The attempt to purge the con- 
ception of the selfhood which at first attaches to it, even if 
it be legitimate, by no means clears it of as purely subjective 
and, to use HaeckeFs own expression, "anthropic" an origin 
as the developed theistic conception against which he wages 
warfare. Man is as much the source of the concept of 
substance as he is of the idea of God. The use of 
this concept is an example in fact of the cosmological ar- 
gument for the existence of God, to which such serious objection 
was taken by Kant. Eoughly speaking, this argument 
is as follows. Every beginning has a cause; the world 
had a beginning, therefore the world had a First Cause. As 



338 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

presented in the ordinary theological way, this argument offers 
the dilemma of either conceiving a process of phenomenal 
causation which has had no beginning, that is, has been going 
on from all eternity; or, on the other hand, of starting from 
an original Source which is the First Cause of all the effects 
subsequently manifest in the universe. It has been argued 
that the first of these two alternatives, involving an infinite 
regress, is unthinkable, and that therefore we are driven to 
the second alternative of a First Cause, which in order to 
be sufficient, is invested by subsequent argument with the 
attributes of divinity. The argument as thus presented is 
open to a variety of criticisms. In particular a twofold 
objection is taken by Kant against it. In the first place he 
objects that the category of causality holds good in the world of 
phenomena, but cannot be extended from the relations of par- 
ticular phenomena to that which is the source of all. His second 
objection is to the attempt to posit a First Cause as being 
necessary to explain the world, which, because of its finitude, 
presents itself as an accidental effect. Further, it is argued that 
because a conception is unthinkable, in the sense that it cannot 
be realised by the imagination, it is not necessarily untrue ; that 
an infinite regress cannot be presented to the mind is no sound 
argument against its reality. 

Whatever may be the force of these objections, they do 
not invalidate the essential meaning of the cosmological 
argument. To admit them all is only to be brought face to 
face with that wherein its real significance consists. It is 
clear that the First Cause said to be established by this 
argument stands in a totally distinct relation to phenomena 
from that of the whole series of phenomenal causes. It does 
so, if for no other reason than that it is treated as the under- 
lying explanation of the whole, instead of as a particular 
activity manifest in the parts. It is unnecessary to discuss 
the applicability of the attribute of necessity to such an 
explanation, provided that it is found to be real. In addition 
it may frankly be admitted that there is a fallacy in the form 
of the argument that because an infinite series is unimaginable 
therefore it cannot be existent. For it is impossible to stretch 
the power of the imagination to cover all the facts of the 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 339 

universe. Moreover, it is perhaps not of the greatest impor- 
tance to the theistic argument whether the phenomenal 
universe has existed from past eternity, or whether it had 
its origin in time. What, however, the cosmological argument 
attempts to satisfy, is the demand of the human mind for a 
suflficient reason of all that exists. It is not so much concerned 
to find the first term in a series of phenomenal causes, as to find 
the principle of unity which constitutes the whole series, the 
power which makes them effective, the wisdom which orders 
them. Such alone can be their suflScient reason. The nature 
of such a sufiicient reason is involved in the structure of con- 
sciousness itself, and in the relation of consciousness to all its 
states. "We are conscious of a twofold relationship within our- 
selves. The one is of the phenomenal succession of mental 
states — including thoughts, feelings, and desires, under the 
influence of perception, the association of ideas, and changes of 
bodily condition. We are, in addition, conscious of a Self to 
which all these changes in consciousness are relative, and which 
is manifest in them all. 

The cosmological argument postulates a similar explanation 
of the universe as involving on the one hand a possibly infinite, 
series of phenomenal changes in an ordered system, and under- 
lying that series, constituting and explaining it, a reality 
which holds a similar relationship to the whole that selfhood 
holds to the manifold states of conscious life. The form of the 
cosmological argument is an attempt to give exact expression 
to this demand. Its force depends upon the legitimacy of 
the transference to the universe as a whole of the particular 
relations manifest in finite consciousness. The procedure of 
monistic philosophy, whether represented by Spinoza or by 
Haeckel, affirms the legitimacy, and even the necessity, of this 
assumption. It is dissatisfied with the so-called infinite 
regress of finite causes, and postulates an underlying Sub- 
stance manifest throughout them as being their only possible 
explanation. 

Exactly the same dissatisfaction accounts for Herbert 
Spencer's postulate, the inscrutable Power, possessing the 
causal effectiveness which, as has been seen, is suggested by 
the triumph of the human will over subjective inertia and 



340 THE CHRISTIAN KELIGION 

objective resistance. The substantial contention, therefore, of 
the cosmological argument, is agreed to alike by Theists, 
Monists, and Agnostics; and is agreed to by all simply 
because, despite the opposition of Haeckel, the human mind 
is forced to conceive the universe "anthropically," that is, to 
treat the fundamental features of human consciousness as con- 
taining a revelation of the fundamental features of the universe 
as a whole. Just as the individual is conscious of a greater 
measure of reality in himself than he attributes to his passing 
thoughts and feelings, so he searches for what has been termed 
the "Ens realissimum*^ underlying the passing states of the 
universe as a whole. 

The question then arises to what extent this principle 
should be applied. The Monist, as has been seen, does not 
escape by his attenuated conception of substance from 
the anthropomorphism to which he objects. The Agnostic 
thinks himself entitled to appeal to the inscrutable Power 
so far as that assumption is necessary to make him at home 
in the universe, for his practical purposes of phenomenal 
explanation. Why rob the fundamental Substance of those 
qualities of selfhood and character which are manifest in 
the only substance of which we have immediate knowledge, 
namely, self -consciousness ? And why, having claimed power 
for the underlying Substance, should objection be taken 
to its being further clothed with mind, heart, and will? 
At least, no objection can be raised against the latter exten- 
sion which cannot be urged with equal force against the 
former. Yet such objections urged against either the com- 
plete or the incomplete expression of this underlying principle 
of the human mind fall to the ground before man's absolute 
inability to get out of himself, or to treat his fundamental 
deliverances as having no relation whatever to the conception 
and explanation of the universe. 

It is said that knowledge is only of phenomena, the 
things that appear. Of what are they appearances? To 
whom do they appear? It is selfhood, as has been seen, 
that causes us to conceive the relation of substance to 
phenomena. It is consciousness to which phenomena appear. 
Must not this fundamental fact of selfhood be used as the 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 341 

one sufficient reason to explain the world? Is there not com- 
pleter justification for the full use of it than for the attenuated 
use contained both in Monism and Agnosticism ? Must not the 
sense of need of a world-explanation haunting all men, with 
the practical assumption that such an explanation can be found 
attending most men, be held to be of greater weight than ab- 
stract objections raised against both the need and its satisfaction, 
especially when such abstract objections fall to the ground 
through their inner inconsistency, and assume in a veiled or 
mutilated form precisely the principles it is their professed 
business to oppose? 

II. The next subject for inquiry is as to what is involved in the 
hypothesis of Evolution. 

Understood as a mental conception, the doctrine of evolution 
asserts that the present state of the universe is due to a gradual 
and orderly unfolding, brought about throughout by the operation 
of natural causes. 

Pervasive as the hypothesis has become, gaps still remain 
which the whole course of scientific investigation up to the 
present has failed to explain away. The first of such gaps 
is found at the introduction of life, the second at the appear- 
ance of consciousness, the third at the manifestation of 
those highest forms of consciousness which are exhibited in 
the rational, moral, and religious activity of man. It cannot 
be said that either speculation or physical inquiry has in any 
way helped us to understand the transition from the non- 
living to the living, from the living to the conscious, or 
from the conscious to the fully rational and religious. As 
has been observed with regard to the first of these, "the 
specter of a vital principle still lurks behind all our terms.^'* 
Various methods are adopted in order to overcome this 
difficulty. The attempt to reduce the phenomena of life, 
consciousness, and reason to terms of matter and motion will 
be considered shortly. A counter tendency to find the dim 
promise of life and consciousness in that which appears 
at first sight to be non-living and merely physical has 
already been noticed. The view that life naturally emerges 



1 Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, vol. ii., 
p. 462. 



342 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

from the non-living, when all the conditions are favorable, 
without the introduction of a special vital principle, raises 
the great problem how to account for these favorable con- 
ditions without a prearrangement which involves prevision 
and purpose. The difficulty of conceiving the evolution of 
the conscious from the unconscious, and of the highest forms 
of rational life from the lower, presents even greater diffi- 
culties. 

It is needless here to particularize more special difficulties, as, 
for example, the fact that biology appears to require a much 
greater period of time for the evolutionary processes than physics 
is at present prepared to pronounce possible. 

It may suffice to consider what is involved in either 
alternative, whichever may ultimately hold the field. Should 
the existence of gaps in the evolutionary process be ulti- 
mately confirmed by science, and the necessity of distinct 
principles of life and consciousness be conceded, the in- 
troduction of such distinct principles into the world at the 
precise moment when its general conditions enabled it to 
receive and foster them will ever remain one of the strongest 
evidences of a superintending mind, and a sovereign will, 
carrying out its purpose in a time-succession by a recurring 
creation of higher forms of being, to which all previous forms 
become subservient. It is possible, however, to conceive that 
the gaps may be bridged by a more complete investigation 
of the physical conditions, if to these be added the frank 
recognition of the promise of life and mentality clearly recog- 
nized as such in the most rudimentary forms of physical 
existence. In short, if the opposition between nature and spirit 
is transcended at the outset, it may be unnecessary to face 
it at the finish, provided the course of physical investigation 
shows that gaps were not really existent in the physical 
history of the world. Suppose that the imagined existence 
of these gaps be disproved, the emergence of the conscious 
out of the unconscious, of the living out of the non-living 
will still remain unthinkable unless the potency and promise 
of life and consciousness be traced back to primordial 
existence itself. 

Let it be assumed, however, that this result is reached. 



THE CRITICISM OF XATURALISM 343 

What then does the conception of evolution demand and 
the investigation of the universe reveal? Surely if an}i;hing 
serious is meant by the conception, the three following 
elements are absolutely indispensable to it. Firstly, an 
immanent end, which is gradually attained by the universe 
in a way somewhat similar to the arrival at maturity by the 
living organism. Secondly, an organized system for realizing 
that end, or for attaining to that maturity. This involves 
the reality of an all-embracing process, which correlates and 
coordinates all parts and forces throughout the whole, so 
that order is preserved throughout change, and all change 
is in the direction of the final result. Thirdly, a persistent 
energy, pressing upward and onward, towards ever more 
highly elaborated results. This, at any rate, is the impres- 
sion borne in upon us by the study of any province of the 
universe, and it is distinctly the conception of its history 
which is conveyed by those who offer evolution as the 
explanation of the world. If the conception be intended 
to be not merely satisfying to the imagination, but also 
theoretically strict, it presents a metaphysical problem at 
every point which it will be subsequently contended can 
only be solved by a theistic interpretation. If the main 
conception be not seriously intended, we are being played 
with as by conjurers, who divert us by means of by-play, 
while their tricks are being performed. In order to satisfy 
the imagination a large conception is presented, the essential 
meaning of which is cast aside in the particular hypothesis of 
physical explanation. In such case the real meaning of the 
conception is evacuated, and only chance remains as the true 
explanation of the world. On this supposition the original 
existence of matter is postulated, and infinite time is claimed 
with infinite possibilities of experimental combinations of 
primordial atoms. A subsequent warfare between these com- 
binations takes place, in which the fittest survive and become 
aggregated in the correlated system of things which we 
understand by the universe. Such has been the explana- 
tion offered, with minor variations, by ancient and modern 
Materialism, from the time of Leucippus and Democritus 
to the present day. 



344 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

As a mere conception, it presents the insoluble problem of 
transmuting chaos into cosmos without a principle of order 
involved. The very assumption that, from such a fortuitous 
concourse of atoms, the related world which we know could 
emerge, carries back to the first beginnings of things by an 
illicit process of the mind exactly those principles of relation 
with which our experience of the ordered world as it exists 
has made us familiar. The multiplicity of such phrases as 
'^accidental variation,^' '^natural selection," "the survival of the 
fittest," and the like, does nothing to assist the explanation 
of the world by chance. Each of these is open to the most 
serious criticism. In particular it is entirely unscientific to 
speak of variations as accidental. Completed knowledge 
would without doubt give a full explanation of the causes 
of such variations, as of all other physical changes. But 
beyond all such criticism the appearance, the advantage, the 
survival and perpetuation of particular variations are only 
indications that the universe is constituted in a particular 
way. The real problem is then, given an entirely disorderly 
world with the present principles of order at work, to 
describe how everything which was incompatible with them 
passed out of existence in order that they might prevail through- 
out an ordered universe. The principle of order is clandestinely 
introduced from our existing knowledge of the world. When 
it is discovered it must be called to account for itself, and it will 
be found to imply principles which are from first to last the 
negation of chance. 

Looked at from a more general standpoint, the human 
mind will never believe that the universe, which throughout 
its infinite vastness reveals such marvelous delicacy of 
organization, as universally in the infinitesimal as in 
the infinite ; which throughout the whole range of nature shows 
the prevalence of common principles of inter-relation; and 
which throughout all changes maintains alike the minuteness 
and mastery of a perfect order, not imposed from without, 
but manifest within all the related elements of the cosmos, 
is due to a chance hit among infinite other possibilities. 
These possibilities are infinitely against the appearance of any 
one particular combination. When, instead of one single 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 345 

combination, the existence of an infinite number of successive 
and coordinated combinations is involved, the possibility of 
such a result being fortuitous is represented by an infinite 
number of infinite improbabilities piled up upon one another. 
The passage in thought from the constitution of atoms of 
different types to molecules, from molecules to their colloca- 
tions in the world ; from these to the systems aggregated in the 
countless worlds known to, or imagined by, astronomy, then on 
to living organizations, and finally to the higher animals and 
man, shows how stupendously irrational this conception 
really is. 

Moreover, this process of evolving order out of chaos was 
not a mere mental process, but one which took place on the 
field of material nature. Where, then, are the signs of this 
tremendous warfare between order and disorder, or between 
conflicting systems of order striving for ultimate possession 
of the whole field? Obviously there are none. There are 
indeed, to all appearance, heavenly and other bodies in 
every stage of growth or of decay. There may be planetary 
systems which are hastening to their final dissolution, while 
others are still in their earliest infancy. Yet all these stages 
of evolution are governed by exactly the same laws, and 
exhibit the working of the same relationships with which 
we are familiar in that portion of the universe which we are 
accustomed for ordinary purposes to regard as stable. Indeed, 
the order of the world never represents the stagnant identity 
of any being with its own immediate past; still less such an 
identity of the whole system of things, or of any province 
of it. "All things are in a state of change,^' is still the 
truest generalization from the facts presented to us in every 
part of the universe, whether of mind or of matter. But 
wherever we find such changes going on, they are subject 
to universal laws, and manifest common features. Change 
within the universe, therefore, offers not the slightest 
corroboration of the supposition that there may have been 
rival universes in germ, striving to oust one another from 
existence. Even variations withhi the known universe 
which lead to differing degrees of stability and permanence 
are variations within limits that are strictly marked out. 



34:6 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

All have some measure of positive capacity for existence in 
the universe, else they could not enjoy even the small 
measure of permanence which belongs to them. All enjoy 
it because they are subject to the general laws which condi- 
tion the whole, or rather are particular manifestations of the 
underlying reality which is manifest in all existence and 
through all changes. The detailed test of such an explana- 
tion of evolution by chance should be applied in the case 
of living bodies, whence the whole conception of evolution 
arose. To deal with speculative cases, which at best are 
almost infinitely remote, lends itself indeed to easy assump- 
tions, but provides no basis of sound reasoning. In living 
bodies variation in one particular feature, if at all important, 
means a concomitant transformation of all features. Thus, 
the phenomena of all variations reveal a dominant and 
all-embracing order, persistent in and through all change. 
The whole system is a living and inter-related whole, and 
changes in the organism manifest — not strife, but complete 
coordination. 

Above all, the impossibility of explaining change in the 
universe as due to accident or chance is brought home by the 
new discovery of the importance of the cell-structure in 
biology. The old hypothesis of growth, by what may be 
termed elastic expansion, has been superseded by the doctrine 
of epigenesis, or of growth by division. It is found that de- 
velopment takes place from the primitive and almost 
undifferentiated cell of protoplasm by a ceaseless process of 
growth by division, the organism advancing by each such 
division a stage forward towards its final form. At every 
stage there seem almost numberless possibilities of divergence 
from what is called the type; the very conception of a 
type being, it may be remarked, hard to reconcile with the 
supposition that the world is governed by chance. Can any 
one who traces the growth of any such organism, selecting 
its way as it were through so many chances of abortive 
variation, be content to attribute the result thus steadfastly 
attained to chance? Even if there be a heroic believer in 
the incredible, capable of making such an affirmation in the 
•case of an individual organism, what can be said of the 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 347 

unfailing persistence of the type through countless genera- 
tions, involving the continuous and unfailing reproduction 
of similar forms? If the phenomena of development in any 
single life represent the orderly attainment of an immanent 
end through coordinated changes, which involve internal 
division and the steady assimilation of suitable nourishment 
from a congenial environment, what shall be said of this 
process steadily continued without failure throughout the 
millenniums of biological existence? Moreover, the more 
closely the general conditions of life are studied, the more 
it is borne home upon us that they have regard to the future 
quite as much as to the present, and appear to be devised 
with a view to the steady improvement of liviQg forms. 
Thus the arrangements of nature are in accord vrith the 
progressive energy which is the moving power of its de- 
velopment. Is there any greater probabilit}^ of evolution by 
chance elsewhere? Each stage of physical explanation wins 
some new conquest for the principles of order, discovers a 
harmonious process, completing its results with more than 
an artistes fastidious care, even in the most infinitesimal 
parts. The progress of science is, therefore, by means of the 
exclusion of the fortuitous. As Lotze has pointed out, what 
the material universe presents to us is not infinite possibili- 
ties, which can be contemplated by a thinker, but the actual 
existence of one such possibility.^ The whole development 
of the cosmos has taken place from one actual primitive state, 
which contains the possibility of an infinite but correlated 
development. Variations are only possible within strictly 
definite limits, and therefore never break out from the system 
to which they belong, the nature of which becomes fully 
manifest in their complete development. The question in- 
volved, therefore, is. Why this ordered universe and not 
another? What is involved in this correlation through 
change and in the attainment through this correlated change 
of the finally developed system of the world? The mere use 
of the term "natural selection'^ will not explain it. As has 
been observed, "natural rejection" would be a more suitable 
term than "natural selection," for what is explained thereby 

^ Microcosmos, vol. i. p. 432 (English translation). 



348 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

is not the persistence, still less the first appearance, of any 
positive forms of existence, but the rejection of those which 
do not sufficiently conform to the system of the world to 
insure continuance in it. What constitutes the system which 
so rigorously excludes ultimately these unsuccessful competi- 
tors in favor of superior forms? Is not their rejection due 
to their inability fully to conform to a marked-out end? 
Is not their exclusion, whatever other problems it may involve, 
the evidence of the progressive achievement of an end which 
supersedes the lower by the higher? To what is this per- 
sistent effort to supersede a lower by a higher state of things 
to be attributed ? So far as we are familiar with such a process 
in ourselves — our only sphere of immediate observation — such 
effort reveals purpose. A\Tiat can be the justification of casting 
aside this element so indispensable in the field of our own 
primary observation, when we come to examine apparently 
kindred phenomena upon the stupendous scale of the 
universe without ? 

Once more, chance is the negation of reason. To say that 
a change came by chance is to say that no reason can be 
given for it. Yet the whole investigation of the universe 
proceeds on the initial assumption that it is a rational whole, 
and that the reason of it can be discovered. The result of 
each stage of the investigation, in whatever department it 
is carried on, is to make the universe appear more rational 
than it was before. It is to encourage the hope that when 
the process of inquiry is completed, if ever, the last lurking 
appearance of unreason will have been expelled, and all things 
will appear naked and open, that is, comprehensible to an 
all-embracing mind. 

To sum up, we have the following results of the evolution 
of the universe. In the first place, its supreme product is 
mind. Mind unifies all its experiences, present and past, by 
reference to a Self which underlies and is present to them all. 
By means of memory mind can revive the past as a personal 
experience in a way which is absolutely incomprehensible, 
unless the full spiritual significance of the self to which that 
past was relative be tacitly assumed. The self which thus 
unifies its own experience is characterized by reason, affection, 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 349 

and will. It seeks to attain the purposes which satisfj^ reason 
and affection by deliberate choice issuing in volition. The ap- 
pearance of such a reasoning, desiring, volitional being is the last 
outcome and the most remarkable product of evolution, which 
ever strives, apparently, to produce and to perpetuate the highest 
forms of being. 

Secondly, when this rational self appears upon the scene 
as the result of evolution, it seeks and finds a corresponding 
reason in the universe outside itself. It comes to seek and 
to find that reason outside itself by realizing a reason within 
itself, which it did not create, but which was provided for 
it by means of this process of evolution. As this process of 
evolution completes itself in the mental development of the 
rational self, it discloses the larger reason of the world outside. 
The mind grows to its maturity in finding that the world 
without is intelligible by being apparently purposive. This 
evolution of rational faculty and discovery is on the hypoth- 
esis part of evolution itself. How, upon the principles of 
evolution, can the light which it sheds upon the whole 
processes which culminated in itself be dismissed as worthless 
for the purpose of world-explanation? Surely the fact that 
the highest product of evolution is rational, needs to find 
reason in the whole process which has culminated in itself, 
and successfully finds it there with every advance of its 
own thought and experience, is the evidence that uniting and 
underlying the rational self and the universe which it explains 
is an absolute self. That self awakens the need and gives 
the power to apprehend reason in the world, simply because 
its own underlying reason and purpose is unfolded alike 
in the laws of evolution and in the mind that comes to discover 
them. 

To all this it is replied, as has been seen, that mind is a 
mere epiphenomenon, arising whenever certain complicated 
conditions of physical organization are realized; but wholly 
inoperative as a cause determining physical conditions, and 
therefore useless to make any contribution towards their 
explanation. 

To this general view two objections must be raised, which 
to ordinary minds will always seem conclusive. In the first 



350 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

place, from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness this 
general conclusion is incredible. It is a contradiction of our 
own primary experience, and is totally impracticable for the 
ordinary concerns of life. So far as man is a percipient being 
he has a primary instinct that he possesses a measure of 
reality, which is not possessed by the successions of his 
sensations and perceptions. The self to which these are 
related in consciousness has a sense of continuous identity, a 
memory of the past, and an expectation of the future. Each 
man's present experience is what it is, because by means of 
self-consciousness it finds its place in the texture of events 
which form the life-history of the self. Reality, therefore, 
for him is determined so far as it concerns himself by the 
placing of each new experience in that time-succession, which 
has no meaning except for an enduring self present throughout 
the whole. If it should be suggested to him that some 
elements of this experience are merely subjective, he tests 
their objective reality by discovering whether they re- 
late themselves to other selves as they do to him. The test 
of reality, therefore, applies by ordinary consciousness to 
perceptions, is their presentation to a world of selves as part 
of a common consciousness which implies not only immediate 
experience, but also memory and expectation. To throw out 
this self-reference in perception is to throw aside not only the 
basis, but also the meaning of knowledge. It is to deny the 
primary and to substitute for it a secondary, which is in all 
cases an inference from the primary, and an inference the very 
making of which depends upon the application to the secondary 
of principles which have been discovered in the primary. With 
the disappearance of the primary, therefore, the secondary 
vanishes also. And the mind, face to face with this result, is 
reduced to stupefaction. 

In the second place, our primary consciousness has equally 
a sense of making choice. The alternatives of that choice are 
supplied to us by a state of things in the external world; 
as, for instance, when walking in the country I find myself 
brought to a stand by a dead wall, and have to decide whether 
I will make a detour to the right or to the left. For ordi- 
nary consciousness the hypothesis which denies that material 



THE CEITICISM OF NATURALISM 351 

conditions can operate upon the mind, or be affected by it, 
will be negatived as absurd by such common experiences. 
But when this influence of external things upon the mind 
takes place, I am assured by the consciousness which accom- 
panies all choice that it is within my own power to act one 
way or the other. When my progress is stopped by such an 
obstruction, I deliberate which is the best way out of the 
difiBculty. My mind wavers between various considerations 
presented to it. It may be that I am unable clearly to decide 
which is the better course to take. Yet, as it is necessary to- 
make progress, I at last throw the whole weight of myself upon 
the side of one of the alternatives, prepared to run the risk of 
having made a mistake. This consciousness also is primary. 
To attempt to explain it away is to explain away the better 
known by the less known, and by a less known which exactly 
contradicts the immediate consciousness by which alone life is 
possible. The very contradiction, moreover, is made by fetching 
up out of my own consciousness that sense of continuity and 
of causal relation, or it may be only of inseparable association 
or succession, which again in the last resort is supplied,, not 
by things in themselves, but by things as presented in and 
affecting consciousness. 

Hence, this treatment of mind is not only incredible from 
the standpoint of common consciousness, but reduces the very 
idea of explanation to an absurdity. Explanation, when care- 
fully considered, can mean nothing but translation into terms 
of mind. That by which, and in terms of which, all knowledge 
exists must not at the end of the process be swept away in order 
that that which is only intelligible by and through it may be 
substituted for it. An explanation is only asked by mind; 
apart from mind there is nothing to be explained. The means 
of explanation are everywhere found in principles supplied 
by mental states themselves. When philosophically examined,, 
the whole foundations and cogency, not only of philosophy 
but of science, are destroyed directly the mind is dethroned. 
Hence, in order to the explanation of nature, nay, even to the 
appearance of nature, the transcendence and immanence of 
self-consciousness are necessary. According to the develop- 
ment of that self-consciousness is the extent and fullness of the 



352 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

world perceived and sought to be explained. The world 
appears as infinite to man in comparison of its limited signifi- 
cance to the lower animals, because a higher and larger self- 
consciousness has been given to man than is possessed by them. 
It is the full development of self-consciousness which relates 
man in thought to the universe, and gives him a growing 
apprehension of its vastness and its order. Upon this 
fundamental fact rests the ineradicable belief that mind has 
a reality and an efficiency of a higher degree than is possessed 
by nature abstractly, though wrongly, conceived as the 
antithesis of mind; and that to understand the relations 
in which mind and nature stand to one another it is necessary 
to assume a universal mind underlying and manifest in 
both. Hence, the most natural explanation of evolution as 
a persistent upward tendency of all things, culminating 
in finite mind, and unfolding to that mind a universal reason 
and, at least, the appearance of steadfast purpose, is to be 
found in the universal presence in all the parts and proc- 
esses of the universe of a sovereign mind as the only 
known cause of persistent and of ordered effort, manifesting 
that attainment of satisfying ends by ordered means which 
we call reason. 

III. It is necessary, in the next place, to examine what is 
involved in the supposed explanation of the world in terms 
of Matter and Motion. It is assumed, as has been seen, by 
those who offer a naturalistic explanation of the universe, that 
it can be explained by the action and interaction of these two 
factors. Assuming these as the ultimate realities of physical 
existence, the problem of science is to reach, examine, measure, 
and describe them. Such a process, if completed, would furnish 
a complete definition alike of their inmost nature and their 
mutual relations. Our present business is to consider what 
is the source of these two factors, whether they can pos- 
sibly be treated as ultimate, or even as possessing independent 
existence, and how the conception of them stands related to our 
subjective experience. 

As to the first question, the ordinary reply would be that 
matter and motion are supplied to us by sense-experience. 
Modern science, at least in England, assumed at the outset 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 353 

Locke's doctrine of perception and Hume's doctrine of causa- 
tion. The former treated the senses as supplying ready-made 
the complete objects of perception. These objects are subse- 
quently dealt with by reflection, which examines the relations 
in which they stand one to another. Experience, therefore, 
is assumed to be sense-experience. Such sense-experience 
provides us with innumerable cases of invariable association 
of particular antecedents and consequents in change. A 
determined effort has been made, first of all by Hume, and 
then by the modern association school of philosophy, to 
represent that this invariable association is all that is implied 
in physical causation. Waiving all other criticism of it, it 
has become clear that such a conception of causation is 
insufficient to explain the phenomena of evolution as under- 
stood by recent science. Therefore, behind the conception of 
invariable association, that of energy has been introduced as 
the supposed explanation of all the phenomena of physical 
causation, and above all of that upward tendency involving 
the overcoming of resistance which evolution has recognized 
as active throughout the whole development of the world. 
Hence, the physical conception of the world is that of ultimate 
particles of matter as force-points, the centers upon which and 
from which forces are directed, and of energy, now latent and 
now active in the various forces which reveal their presence in 
particular modes of motion. 

When, however, these conceptions are examined closely, it 
will be seen that they are based upon the ordinary view of 
common sense. As Mr. Merz has said, "Common sense has 
never had any difficulty in knowing what matter and force 
are, or in defining them for the purposes of practical life."^ 
Eoughly speaking, matter represents that outside ourselves 
which resists change; and force represents the power to effect 
change in spite of resistance. The fact, well knoT\Ti in 
experience, that we can divide matter to an indefinite extent 
by mechanical means, and that it is capable of vastly greater 
subdivision by chemical processes, has from the dawn of 
physical speculation led naturally to the supposition either 
that matter is infinitely divisible, or that the process of 

* Merz, History of European Thotight in the Nineteenth Century, vol. i. p. 334. 



354 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

division, when carried to its ultimate limit, will reach primi- 
tive particles of matter, called atoms simply because they are 
incapable of further division. This conception was reached by 
the Greeks in a prescientific age. The contribution of modern 
science consists of the application of calculation and measure- 
ment as the combined result of abstract mathematics and of 
physical observation by means of experiments and the construc- 
tion of models. The primary elements of matter, whether atoms 
or the electric ions out of which the most recent science believes 
atoms to be compounded, however they may be treated by 
mathematical calculation, must for ever remain beyond the 
reach of direct perception. They are creatures of the imagina- 
tion whose existence is treated as verified by the practical 
results of assuming them. The question is as to what is involved 
in that assumption, and whether, if legitimate, it provides 
an adequate and final explanation of the system of the 
world. 

1. In the first place, then, it must be observed that the 
discovery of atoms, even if they could be made direct objects 
of the senses, would leave the problem exactly where it was 
before. To reach the ultimate elements of matter by a direct 
act of perception would leave unsolved the question. What is 
matter, and how does it stand related to the mind which 
perceives it? The ultimate atom is only imaginable as 
revealed in a state of consciousness. An infinite and perfect 
consciousness, instead of seeing matter merely as an indeter- 
minate whole, would on the hypothesis perceive it as an 
infinitely complex organization of infinitesimal particles. 
This clearer perception, however, would not do away with 
the fact that it is still a percept. We have, therefore, not got 
past the great problem of metaphysics. How does the matter 
perceived stand related to the mind which perceives it? The 
mind is as influential in regard to the atom as it is in regard 
to the universe which is built up by means of countless atoms. 
The consciousness, therefore, which perceives, whether directly 
or by means of the imagination, cannot be dispossessed from its 
prerogative position by breaking up the matter perceived into 
its original elements. 

2. Secondly, it is an unproved and perhaps unwarranted 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 355 

assumption that the energy which is the condition of physical 
explanation is a fixed and unchanging quantity. It is con- 
stantly assumed that in dealing with the conception of energy 
its quantity can be treated as definitely fixed, and that its 
availableness for use is exhaustible. Such an assumption is 
highly convenient to our limited intelligence, just as it is 
convenient for the purposes of a game to play it with a fixed 
number of counters and to assign a particular numerical value 
to each one of the counters. But supposing the conception of 
energy to be substantiated by purely scientific reasons, it must 
be confessed that we are face to face with the initial mystery 
of physical existence. Confident assertions are probably 
illegitimate, whether on the one side or the other; yet there 
appears equal ground for the supposition that the supply of 
energy in the universe is infinite as for that which treats it, 
no doubt with much convenience to science, as a fixed and 
exhaustible quantity. The recent discoveries of radium, and 
the speculations which have destroyed the presumed simplicity 
of chemical atoms, have shown how exceedingly precarious 
are all absolute conclusions upon these matters. The aphorism 
"Omnia exeunt in mysterium" seems peculiarly applicable to 
such a primitive factor, if indeed it be primitive, as physical 
energy. , 

3. In the third place, do atoms and energy really exist ? 

In the case of atoms there is no agreement upon the 
subject. As Mr. Merz points out, in reviewing the course of 
atomic science during the last century, "Although, therefore, 
chemical research was governed all through the century by 
the atomic view of matter, it does not appear that philos- 
ophers considered the existence and usefulness of chemical 
formulae as a proof of the physical existence of atoms, or 
of smallest indivisible particles of matter, in the older sense 
of the theory. Hand in hand with this purely formal and 
experimental treatment of chemical phenomena went the 
almost absolute neglect with which questions referring to 
chemical aflBnity were treated. The word was little more 
than a name for an unknown something." ^ In recent years, 
however, researches, due in their origin rather to physics than 

^ Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, vol. i. pp. 419-20. 



356 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

to chemistry, have developed the atomic view of matter until 
Lord Kelvin says that "the Newtonian theory of gravitation is 
not surer to us now than is the atomic or molecular theory in 
chemistry and physics, so far, at all events, as its assertion of 
heterogeneousness in the minute structure of matter, apparently 
homogeneous to our senses, and to our most delicate direct 
instrumental tests/^^ 

The change in the mental attitude on this subject has 
been due to the development of what is known as the Kinetic 
Theory of Gases. In this development the influence of Clerk- 
Maxwell has been powerfully felt. Under the influence of 
these great physical inquirers the absolute distinction in the 
popular mind between the solid, liquid, and gaseous states of 
matter has been broken down, and, to quote Mr. Merz again, it 
has been shown that the supposed static properties of matter 
"could be explained by different modes of motion, translational, 
periodic, and rotational."^ Thus, for example. Lord Kelvin 
has advanced his celebrated "vortex theory of matter," though 
this conception has raised apparently as many difficulties as it 
has solved; it being, at any rate at present, impossible to 
explain how whirling matter acquires weight and increased 
inertia.3 In recent thought the phenomena of electricity 
have acquired importance in the doctrine and constitution of 
matter, but no physical explanation has yet been found of what 
is meant by an electrically charged body. Hence, we may take 
it that the atomic view of matter in its various forms represents 
not a finally ascertained fact, but a convenient description 
for the purposes of scientific speculation. Its simplicity is 
being attacked by various hj^potheses of systems of motion 
involved in the action of particles. The supposed simplicity 
of the ultimate elements Imown to chemistry has already 
given way, and the existence of constituents hitherto un- 
suspected is now insisted upon. In fact, all forms of matter 
are now treated as electrified modifications of the universally 
diffused ether, which represents matter in its most primitive 
form. 



1 Lord Kelvin on ''Capillary Attraction," 1886. See Popular Lectures and 
Addresses, vol. i. p. 4. Quoted by Merz, vol. i, pp. 424-5. 
a Ibid., vol. ii. p. 56. » Ibid., vol. ii. p. 64. 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 357 

Yet if the conceptions of the constitution of matter have 
passed through many revolutionary changes in recent years, 
and are still left in a state of the highest uncertainty, 
the exactitude of mathematical dynamics is in contrast to such 
uncertainty. The most elaborate and exact calculations are 
made as to the behavior of matter, although its nature and 
constitution is open to the greatest difference of opinion. 
Such mathematical dynamics reach rigidly certain conclusions 
just because they simplify the real problem by artificial 
abstraction. They are a system of "conceptual shorthand," as 
Professor Karl Pearson has called them. The more careful 
physical investigators have clearly recognized this limitation. 
Professor Clerk-Maxwell, for example, says, "By refer- 
ring everything to the purely geometrical idea of the motion of 
an imaginary fluid, I hope to attain generality and precision_, 
and to avoid the dangers arising from a premature theory pro- 
fessing to explain the cause of the phenomena. If the results 
of mere speculation which I have collected are found to be of 
any use to experimental philosophers in arranging and inter- 
preting their results, they will have served their purpose, and 
a mature theory, in which physical facts will be physically 
explained, will be formed by those who by interrogating Nature 
herself can obtain the only true solution of the questions which 
the mathematical theory suggests."^ 

In other words, mathematics offers a conceptual solution, 
which is exact in proportion as it is abstract. It does not 
attempt a real solution, which must be left to the methods of 
experimental inquiry. All that it does is to show that the 
behavior of matter in motion is as if certain ideal con- 
ceptions of it were true. In short, the science of dynamics, 
although its use of mathematics gives it absolute exactness, 
partakes of both the advantage and the disadvantage of every 
other abstract field of human thought. Abstractions are never 
adequate to represent facts of nature, but are artificial simplifi- 
cations of them for the purposes of hum^n thought and 
imagination. 

If radical defects are inherent in all mathematical ex- 
planations of the constitution and behavior of nature, the 

1 Clerk-Maxwell, Quoted Scientific Papers, vol. i. p. 157. Merz, vol. ii. p. 81. 



358 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

inadequacy of such explanations is, above all, manifest when 
advance is made from mere physical problems to those which 
have to do with the appearance and organization of life. 
Try as men will to dispense with the conception of a vital 
principle which physical inquiries have endeavored to drive 
out into the limbo of irrational metaphysics, yet there 
remains an inherent and permanent difficulty in explaining 
life, and above all, consciousness, in terms of matter 
and motion. Consciousness, to whatever cause it is due, cer- 
tainly cannot be confused with matter in motion or described 
in terms of it. Nor is it possible to understand by this means 
how a physical organism which represents from the stand- 
point of the physicist the most unstable form of matter in 
motion should yet have power to overcome physical inertia 
and to achieve development along the lines of biological evolu- 
tion. When life appears, it is a new thing, exhibiting a nature 
and behavior of its own, which, however they may be affected 
by the laws of matter in motion, are not resolvable into them. 
Thus, however men may try to dispense with such conceptions, 
and to criticize them on physical grounds, the conception of 
a vital principle or of the nisus formativus involved in the 
growth of living organizations, is as necessary to the imagination 
in dealing with biological phenomena as are the abstract 
conceptions of the nature of matter and of motion in the 
sphere of physics. 

4. In the next place, atoms and energy, matter and 
motion, even if they be actually existent, are all of them 
artificial abstractions from a concrete whole, given in human 
experience. It is impossible to find in nature matter with- 
out motion, or motion without matter; just as it is impossible 
to isolate any individual particle of matter from the whole 
texture of material relations in which it exists. The real 
whole of experience consists of things in an infinite network 
of relationships. To attempt to reach a thing apart from its 
relations is, from the first, foredoomed to failure, for a thing 
can only be defined in terms of the sum of its relations. 
Thus interdependent relations form the system of the 
universe. They are the manifestations of that coherently 
articulated Power which even Agnosticism is forced to posit 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 359 

as the ultimate basis of all things. Hence, to whatever depth 
our thought may penetrate, it is impossible to arrive at the 
bare, unrelated thing simply because it is nothing at all. 
The very attempt to reach it in thought involves a world 
of abstractions, in which the widest differences are equally 
legitimate. 

The attempt to separate matter from motion, and to treat 
motion as the result of energy, is simply an instance of this 
abstraction, which, while it may be legitimate for the purpose 
of science, cannot possibly be treated as adequate to the 
realities of the world. The plan of including all activity 
under the conception of force or energy, and of treating 
matter as in itself essentially passive, which exists merely to 
be acted upon or to resist action, is simply a product of 
human imagination. When we are dealing with such pro- 
ducts, it is open to us to vary them indefinitely, and none 
can deny us the right. Of only one thing are we immediately 
conscious : of a world exhibiting infinite variety of relationships, 
presented within our consciousness, and naturally interpreted 
by us as manifesting not only order in change, but power. 
The question is not merely what is involved in order, 
which within the range of our experience is associated ex- 
clusively with purpose, but what is involved in power, and 
whether any conception of power which does not involve per- 
sonality is not a mere abstraction for working purposes, which 
reveals its inadequacy directly it is closely examined.^ When 
this abstract description of nature in terms of atoms, 
motion, force, and energy is complete, it becomes clear that 
every one of these terms is a mere symbol. We are as far from 
knowing what they are in themselves as we were at the begin- 
ning. In short, it remains open to us practically to make them 
mean exactly what we please, so long as we neither violate the 
laws of mathematics in calculating by means of them, nor con- 
tradict the facts of nature itself as they are presented to us in 
consciousness. 

5. To what is this combination of practical usefulness with the 
lack of finality and determinateness really due? To this: 
that our whole conception of what is involved in the primary 

1 See previoiis disctissioa, pp. 333-41. 



3G0 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION- 

qualities of matter and in the existence of energy, is the pro- 
jection into the world outside ourselves of certain of our own 
conscious states. 

We are conscious, on the one hand, of passivity, and on 
the other of activity. Our passivity is bound up with our 
sensational nature, and with that resistance to unpleasant 
change which is involved in it. On the other hand, we are 
possessors of a fund of active power, by which we deliberately 
attempt to change certain states, which, for one reason or 
another, are unsatisfactory to us. This opposition experienced 
in our own consciousness is used by us as the interpretation 
of what is involved in the static and dynamic condition of 
nature. Matter is endowed with an inherent power of 
resistance, the conception of which is derived from our own 
mental states. Energy, now latent and now active, is con- 
ceived by means of the now slumbering and now vigorous 
activity of which we are conscious. Thus, the ultimate concep- 
tions of the most purely physical science are, when analyzed, 
as anthropomorphic as those of the most elaborate Theism. 
That they are highly convenient, in fact indispensable, may 
be a strong argument in favor, not merely of their legiti- 
macy, but of their substantial truth. Yet, when their 
subjectivity is clearly recognized, and it is seen that the 
conception of energy is simply a working abstraction from 
the fuller reality of human will, the question is raised 
whether energy in nature can have any other ultimate 
explanation than that, throughout the universe, it is due to 
will-power proceeding on the ordered lines of purpose, just 
as is the case in human nature, from which the conception 
is derived. Thus we see that at every point the science 
which strives to be purely material is steeped in mentality, 
and that all its conceptions involve an abstraction from the 
spiritual, which even in its utmost abstraction cannot throw 
aside the spirituality involved in its very nature and origin. 
All that the Theist asks is that while these conceptions may 
be used for their limited scientific purposes, the ultimate 
interpretation reached shall be held not in abstract apartness, 
in which sense it cannot represent ultimate truth, but should 
be brought back again into the wholeness of its origin. In 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 361 

short, while energy may for the purposes of science be taken 
as an entity, and the laws of its working be investigated upon 
that basis, yet when the process is completed it should be 
remembered that the very conception is simply derived from 
the effectiveness of human w^ill, and that when the concept 
of eJffectiveness in Nature is ultimately examined, it is 
meaningless, save as a working symbol, to the human mind, 
unless it is treated as manifesting the decisions of a Supreme 

wm. 

TV. It is necessar}', in the last place, to inquire as to the 
reality of final causes in nature, and as to the interpretation of 
them if real. 

As has been seen, that which has suggested to the mind the 
conception of energy is the effectiveness of will, while the 
ordered march of evolution, and the special forms of evolu- 
tion manifest in vegetable and animal (to say nothing of 
rational) life can only be construed after the analogy of 
purposiveness as revealed in the deliberate volitions of men. 
Should these analogies, which are indispensable to the most 
restricted scientific explanation of the world, be treated as 
having validity for thought? If so, do they involve a creative 
consciousness, wiU, and therefore personality, as the explana- 
tion of the world? ^Miat guarantee have we that an indis- 
pensable principle of human thought is a guide to reality, and 
that the distinctive spiritual qualities of man are a revelation 
of the nature of God? This last is in reality the ultimate 
problem involved in the question as to final causes. As has 
already been seen in regard to Agnosticism, the mere posit- 
ing of power or energy at the heart of all things leaves the 
problem unsolved. The conception is as subjective as any other, 
and the power which is assumed cannot, as set forth, be accepted 
by thought as a sufficient reason for the world. The mind can- 
not fail stiU to ask, What is this power? Whence is it? How 
can it be the explanation in particular of the spiritual con- 
sciousness which cannot be reduced to the bare terms of matter 
and motion? 

In form Spinoza, the great opponent of final causes, 
avoided this difficulty. The infinite Substance by which he 
explained all things was causa sui, was manifested, so far as 



362 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

men are concerned, in the two parallel attributes of extension 
and thought which have equal claims to be regarded as forms 
of reality, and find their unity only in the eternal Substance 
from which they proceed. In short, so far as Spinoza is con- 
cerned, to quote the words of Pollock, "the point of his 
heterodoxy is that he will not call God exclusively or eminently 
a thinking Being. To say that God is a spirit is in Spinoza's 
view just as inadequate and misleading as to say that man is 
a spirit. Man is a thinking being, but he is also a corporeal or 
extended being ; and thought is only one of the infinite attributes 
of God.''i 

This statement may be treated as adequate, provided that 
it is borne in mind that it leaves open the important question 
whether, when Spinoza spoke of thought as one of the attri- 
butes of God, he meant to attribute consciousness to God as 
God, or whether, as is probable, he considered that the 
thinking attribute of God exists only in innumerable finite 
minds. 

Minor metaphysical criticisms of this view may be waived. 
It is also needless to discuss in detail how far it meets the 
religious and moral needs of men. For Spinoza, as we have seen, 
the conception of human freedom and of the effectiveness of will 
i^ the mere illusion of the mind. Moreover, the peculiar re- 
ligious fervor with which Spinoza contemplated geometry 
enabled him to become "God-intoxicated" upon the bare concep- 
tion of order as found in extension and in the regular sequences 
of nature. 

1. Passing over all this, however, it is clear that what 
enables Spinoza to dismiss the whole conception of final 
causes, not merely in its cruder, but in its more careful 
statement, is his doctrine of dualism, so far as extended matter 
and conscious thought are concerned. Because these two run 
parallel with one another, neither has any claim to the pre- 
eminence. The fact that he carries both back to one source 
in the infinite Substance must not blind us to this fact of 
their supposed practical independence. For the infinite 
Substance is in itself entirely uncharacterized, and is simply 
understood as the tertium quid from which the two attributes 

1 Pollock, Spinoza, p. 353. 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 363 

of extension and thought, with any others that may con- 
ceivably be found in the divine nature, naturally and 
eternally emanate. Can, then, this unmediated dualism 
between extended matter and thought be recognized as a true 
description of the facts? Spinoza only succeeds in treating 
it as such by curtly dismissing the deliverances of human 
consciousness which testify to the meaning and effectiveness 
of self-conscious thought and purpose as illusory. Yet, as has 
again and again been urged, it is onlj^ of these that we have 
primary knowledge; and the extended world, so far from 
existing in independence of thought, can only be presented in 
consciousness and understood by means of those categories 
of personal consciousness which have been dismissed as 
illusory. 

The external world cannot be explained by mere recourse 
to geometrical forms, nor conceived by the bare experience of 
succession. The category of causality is essential, and the 
whole meaning of that category, as we have seen, is derived 
from the consciousness of our own effective power which 
Spinoza has pronounced deceptive. It has been the fashion 
to treat the uniformity of nature, not only as an assumption 
absolutely necessary for the purposes of scientific explanation, 
but as the most assured fact of physical existence. It has been 
conceived as absolutely independent of mental association. 
Yet this fact of uniformity has never been the subject of 
scientific induction. Eather it is the assumption of the human 
mind upon which alone scientific investigation becomes 
possible or even desirable. It is because inquirers assume 
that there are uniformities in nature that they proceed to 
investigate what those uniformities are. As Dr. Ward has 
said, "We do not obtain the conceptions of natural law and 
natural uniformity by an ant-like accumulation of particulars, 
nor are they mere cobwebs of the brain. Impressions do not 
generate these conceptions for us, but we apply the conceptions 
to them, thereby converting and transforming these crude 
experiences into the one ^Objective Experience' we call 
science.''^ 

The destructive skepticism of Hume long ago discovered 

* Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. ii. p. 225. 



364 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

this, and treated the conceptions of natural law and of cause 
as due simply to invariable association, and valid, not theo- 
retically, but only for the practical purposes of life. Yet the 
mere association of ideas is powerless to generate these 
conceptions. We do not find practically that their strength 
depends upon the range or duration of experience. Our 
conviction of them is a primary condition of all mature 
thought and action in the world. It is, in short, the practical 
venture of a faith which only by this means can give to the 
world rationality for thought and stability for action. It is 
the postulate with which we set out, not the conclusion which 
we eventually reach. Hence at every point the primacy of the 
consciousness which Spinoza dismisses is brought home to us. 
Yet the fact that we discover the indispensable outfit even of 
purely scientific inquiry to be at bottom subjective, and to 
involve not merely intellectual but also practical elements, 
does not entitle us to disparage the reality of scientific dis- 
covery, any more than it enables us to dispense with the 
assumptions simply because their origin is subjective. It is 
our contact with the world, as both of it and ahove it, that 
awakens all these categories and postulates into activity, and 
forces us to apply them to the task of world-explanation. As 
we are brought face to face with the world, we are bound to 
treat it as a stable and uniform order, and to make progressive 
verification of this assumption. As we watch the phenomena 
of ordered change, we are bound to call in from our own con- 
sciousness the concept of causality to explain them. As we 
watch the process of evolution, whether in living forms or in 
the system of the universe as a whole, we find the conception 
of a goal to be reached by immanent activity to be essential. 
This conception is supplied to us from our own consciousness 
of willing ends and selecting means, and from the still more 
intimate processes of spiritual growth and achievement. These 
great principles of human explanation, aroused within con- 
sciousness as the external world is presented to it, find 
themselves in nature. Without them nature as an intelligible 
whole does not exist. 

The discovery of this relation between consciousness and 
nature destroys the possibility of treating the apparently 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 365 

material as ultimately unspiritual, or of withholding primacy 
from the spiritual attributes by which nature is intellectually 
organized and practically used. It may be impossible, in our 
philosoph}^, to go behind the ultimate fact of a material world 
distinguished from consciousness. Yet this inability does not 
entitle us to deny the relativity of nature to mind, or the 
primacy of the spiritual principles which the whole of our 
experience manifests. Even if the h}^othesis of philosophical 
dualism be adopted, mind and matter. Spirit and Nature, are 
capable of entering into mutual relations. The material world 
can be cognized, i. e. it can become significant to mind, because 
mind is able to find a community between its own principles 
and those of nature. Thus the distinction, though not super- 
seded, is transcended, and by the growing supremacy of 
reason. If it be asked whether principles of knowledge are a 
guide to realities of being, the answer must surely be "Yes," 
when it is remembered that being supplies us with the 
faculties of knowing, and as the means not only of knowing 
but of life. What, then, is our natural course? Surely to 
treat these principles as being in themselves a key to reality; 
frankly to accept them as the indispensable means of the 
rationality which is sought, and to treat the demand for that 
rationality, not as illusive, but as a trustworthy clue to 
existence. 

But if this be so, what right have we to dismiss anything 
contained in these principles as they become active within us 
as having no place in the system of the world which is explained 
by them? These indispensable concepts of uniformity, 
causality, and end are only known to us as manifestations of 
self-consciousness and of deliberate purpose. When these two 
elements are dismissed from them they become abstractions 
which, while they may be used with advantage in deciphering 
nature, fail to give any account of themselves when specula- 
tively examined. The theistic position is that these concepts 
must be taken as a whole, and that, when taken as a whole, 
they are valid not only for scientific inquiry but also for 
speculative thought. 

In short, the manifestation of uniformity, causality, and 
ends in nature reveals the working of a self-conscious Mind 



366 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

and Will, whose ways are sought out and discovered by the 
human mind in the exercise of its natural faculties in their 
essential interaction with the world. These faculties are the 
finite manifestation of the infinite source of nature and man. 
The rationality of the result involves the rationality of the 
source, and the personal implications of the rational in man 
involve the spirituality and personality of the rational within 
the whole of which man is part. 

2. The same conclusion is reached when man is regarded 
not as the means by which the world is explained, but as in 
himself the summit, so far as human experience goes, of the 
whole system of the world. Wherever else the existence 
of ends in nature may be questioned, at least it is beyond 
doubt that the choice and pursuit of ends is a vital feature 
of human consciousness, and becomes more marked with 
every advance in human civilization. The nature of man 
is developed in absolute union with and to his own conscious- 
ness in pursuit of purposes which are essential to his 
satisfaction. He is equally conscious in his own experience 
of moral freedom and of limitations involved in it. He is 
free to develop the meaning and possibilities inherent in his 
own consciousness; yet the nature whose meaning and possi- 
bilities he realizes is something which he did not create, but 
which was given to him at the start. The purposiveness of 
human life is equally manifest when the phenomena of social 
evolution are studied, and when the whole course of historic 
development is traced. The meaning of the organized social 
life of mankind is only to be found in this deliberate choice 
and pursuit of ends. This is made clear in every field of 
human activity, industrial, commercial, intellectual, or political. 
The mark of advancement in civilization is capacity to select, 
and to hold fast a policy, and a policy is simply a purpose 
chosen from among alternatives to which the life of the 
nation, party, or class is made subordinate. Directly we pass 
from the natural to the social we come clearly into a realm 
which is only intelligible so far as we can explain it teleo- 
logically. This supremacy of the teleological in civilized 
society depends for its possibility upon the teleological con- 
stitution of all individual human life so far as it is conscious* 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 367 

And finally this teleology of individual conscious life exists in 
close parallelism with the teleology of biological development. 
These three are ultimately one. 

The two-fold bearing of this all-important fact is of the 
greatest significance. Man, as the most highly developed 
teleological being, at once completes and transcends a natural 
evolution. If the former of these two aspects be regarded it 
will be seen at once that the mere biological task of his 
appearance and survival is stupendous. If the wonder 
involved in direct creation is great, that which is involved 
in evolution by means of natural selection is even greater. 
It demands the cooperation of a practically unlimited past, 
and of a practically infinite system of natural conditions. 
Yet man not only completes, but also transcends nature. 
While he never entirely escapes from the physical conditions 
of his life, yet these become subordiuate when he begins to 
pursue the ideal ends of civilization. The climax of his natural 
evolution is the starting point of his spiritual history. If 
man may be defined with Aristotle as a rational animal, the 
emphasis at the outset is on the animal, and at the conclusion 
on the rational. As rational, man comes to conceive and to 
generalize in thought, to subdue the animal impulses to rational 
purpose in action. He creates literature, art, religion, to say 
nothing of the material products of civilization. All these 
products are marked by the subservience to purpose which 
becomes dominant in the producer. 

To the whole of the process by which the predominantly 
natural passes into the predominantly spiritual, there are two 
instruments which are absolutely indispensable. The first is 
Language. Eational thought and human society, with all the 
ends of civilization, are impossible without language. The 
development of language takes place side by side with that 
of civilization. It is alike the result and the condition of all 
spiritual progress. Here, again, nature supplies the basis, not 
only in the evolution of the vocal apparatus, but also in the 
instinctive cry and the primitive articulation of the mere 
animal. Yet immediately the inherent and dominant pur- 
posiveness of man takes possession of and molds to its use 
these rude and primitive instruments by deliberate effort. 



368 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Nowhere are the relations of the natural and spiritual more 
clearly manifest than in the development of a great spoken 
language from the few distinct sounds of which its alphabet is 
composed, and the few primitive cries of its infancy. 

If spoken language is essential, the written language is 
equally so for the higher purposes of the spirit. Without it 
history would exist only in the form of vague tradition, center- 
ing in a few outstanding events and personalities. The vast 
accumulations of scientific knowledge would be impossible, and 
the higher poetry could hardly exist. The primitive impulse 
to pictorial representation, of which remains are to be found 
in prehistoric periods, is made to serve first of all the practical 
needs of life, and finally its more strictly rational and its ideal 
interests. 

Yet, language spoken and written, essential as it is, could 
neither exist nor be utilized were it not for memory. It is 
upon memory that the whole possibility of civilization or 
even of the lowest form of human existence depends. Memory 
involves two features, the reference of present events to a 
permanent self, which is conscious of having existed in the 
past, and the power of treating present mental states as 
representations of the experience of that self in the past. 
The essential witness of memory, therefore, is to the per- 
manence through all change of a self to which all such change 
is relative, and which retains within itself a record of such 
changes. The existence of such a self is absolutely inexplic- 
able on purely physical grounds. Even J. S. Mill found the 
Association philosophy absolutely helpless here. "If, there- 
fore," he says, "we speak of the mind as a series of feelings, 
we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series 
of feelings which is aware of itself as a past and future; 
and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that the 
mind, or ego, is something different from any series of feelings 
or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox that 
something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings can 
be aware of itself as a series."^ As a matter of fact, the 
existence of a permanent self is the original datum of faith 
upon which the whole possibility of perception, thought, and 

1 Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 4th edition, p. 248. 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 36^ 

purpose is based. It is the initial postulate of all human life, 
and cannot be explained in terms of anything to the explanation 
of which it is itself essential. 

Here, then, is the fact and problem of man as a teleologic 
system. His life is the consummation of the natural order, 
and the dawn of a spiritual order. Alike his natural equip- 
ment and his spiritual advance involve the infinite processes of 
natural evolution. They are made possible by his own selection, 
half conscious at first, deliberate afterwards. All rudimentary 
instruments of expression are supplied to him by primitive 
instinct, but are developed by grov/ing purposiveness. The 
whole of the vast structure which he creates depends for its 
possibility upon memory, and memory is absolutely inexplicable 
except as the natural function of a selfhood which is above, 
yet relative to, all the experiences and changes of its history. 
Can this marvelous product be casual? Eeason repels the 
imbecility of such a suggestion. Can it be of secondary 
value or meaning in the history of the universe? On the 
contrary, the intuitive judgment alike of healthy manhood 
and of mature reason is, that what is involved in civilization 
alone has highest value, and that, therefore, because it stands 
for what is paramount in value, it stands for what is primary 
in purpose in the universe. It cannot be disengaged, as has 
been seen, from any part of the universe. Its highest instru- 
ments have been presented to it in their potentiality by 
biological development. The Agnostic, if he be an engineer 
like Herbert Spencer, demands unlimited power for the 
universe as a product. But quantity of power is not sufficient. 
For all the reasons which entitle man to assume quantity, we 
are entitled also to assume quality. Can the last product of 
an all-embracing system of evolution be of a higher quality 
than its source? If the end of the process be ideal and 
spiritual, how much more its source? If selfhood be the 
indispensable prerequisite of all human experience, must 
not this all-important fact of human consciousness be 
treated as evidence that a fortiori selfhood is essential to 
the spirituality and purposiveness of the divine? Humanity 
comes to its own by the development within the cosmos of 
rational purposiveness. This rational purposiveness is the 



370 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

characteristic manifestation of a growingly influential selfhood. 
It assimilates and subdues external things to its thoughts and 
purposes in proportion as it subdues internal impulses and 
appetites to the service of the higher life. Does not this whole 
process of spiritual education mean the manifestation of the 
Creator in the created, the return of the creature to the likeness 
of its Source, the acquirement in time of a sovereignty by the 
spiritual over the natural, which expresses the sovereignty of 
Spirit in the eternal ? 

3. The world as evolved, finding its highest stage in self- 
consciousness and in the manifold spiritual life of which self- 
consciousness is the condition, appears in grades, and unfolds 
a system of spiritual values. The spiritual life — understand- 
ing that term in the widest sense — is based upon intuitive 
assumptions, without which it cannot possibly exist. They 
are essential to the justification of its distinctive aims. Once 
let them fail, and human life is reduced to imbecility. Yet, 
from first to last, they partake of the nature of faith. They 
carry their justification within themselves. This justification 
is that they are indispensable to human life, fashioned as a 
coherent and rational whole, and are the aims by which its 
progressive development is brought about. They are, there- 
fore, the words of God, by which alone man lives. That is to 
say, they are as much the laws of spiritual life as the laws 
which physiology investigates are the laws of bodily life. To 
deny them theoretically or practically is to invalidate the 
testimony of the spiritual consciousness by processes of 
thought which, if they sometimes seem to be scientific, are 
none the less ultimately irrational. The object, therefore, of 
all the judgments which man passes as a spiritual and moral 
being is to maintain the integrity of this system of values in 
hrnnan life. The purpose of the moral consciousness, whether 
in the individual, or as partially reflected in the legal and 
social sanctions of the community, is to keep the first things 
first. The standards of life which are necessary to man as a 
spiritual and moral being are upheld inwardly by his moral 
consciousness, and reinforced outwardly by the moral senti- 
ment of society. The object of that sentiment as it develops 
its full and characteristic strength is to protect man from 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 371 

sinking below the spiritual to the animal, whether his 
animality be that of the tiger or of the ape. Undoubtedly 
the effectiveniess of this moral sentiment fails from time to 
time. Its vision may be clouded in the individual or in the 
community, and its executive force may. be too feeble to resist 
the incursions of the^ flesh. When this, happens, howeve:?^ 
humanity itself decays. No amount of science, with ' its 
prudential considerations and restraints, can arrest the down- 
fall which follows upon a perversion, or weakening of the 
moral sense. The only ' method of self-preservation for man 
is that he should become ever more .fully man. And man 
becomes man only through the power by .which he gives 
expression to the principles and standards of his own 
distinctive spiritual and moral life. The maintenance, there- 
fore, of these intuitions and standards necessitates what Dr. 
Martineau has well called a "reverential estimate of human 
nature." 

Further, in order to maintain reverence towards human 
nature it is necessary to maintain reverence towards the 
universe itself. The reverence for Sanctities within can only be 
completed and sustained by revereluce for sanctities without. 
The sense of the holy is to all time the guardian of the true, 
the beautiful, and the good. Except so far as the spirit of 
worship enters into all these their glory is dim and* the pursuit 
of them goes astray. That which brought about the speedy 
eclipse of the glory of Athens at its zenith, and which 
destroyed the promise of the Italian Eenaissance, was the 
failure of the sense of the holy. It was the d'ecay of the 
spirit of reverence for the meaning of the universe, and with 
it came the destruction of that self -reverence which is the 
salt of human life. 

Hence the supreme gift of spiritual evolution is this 
sense of the holy. It maintains the ideal in every one of 
the highest pursuits of life. It saves the pursuit of truth 
from becoming a mere accuriiulation of knowledge, and fills 
it with the large and deep spirit of wisdom. It delivers the 
pursuit of beauty from the enthrallment of the purely physical 
and sensuous and from the taint of lurking animality. It fills 
the pursuit of goodness with the sense of the infinite aijd 



372 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

eternal, and prevents it from sinking to a mere self-regarding 
morality. 

Thus the sense of the holy conserves that which is indis- 
pensable to the integrity of human life by inspiriug the spirit 
of worship, reverence, and humility throughout the whole. 
The perception and pursuit of holiness, therefore, is the highest 
and most indispensable quality of man. It is essential alike 
to the lowly and to the lofty ; to primitive and to modern man. 
In it every other spiritual quality of his being finds its 
highest and ultimate expression. The evangelical graces, 
faith, hope, and love, need it as their atmosphere. The 
cardinal virtues, wisdom, courage, justice, temperance, are 
sustained only in so far as they are nourished from 
this source. 

Yet, the sense of the holy is like other faculties of man, not 
abstract or introspective. Men do not find the holy by retiring 
within from an alien world; but, above all, by looking out and 
looking up. The sense of holiness fastens upon the holy as 
supreme and universal. The holy is a mystic presence, which 
inspires awe when man is alone with nature. Wordsworth has 
given classic expression to this influence — 

And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting sims, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods. 
And mountains, and of all that we behold 
From this green earth; of all the mighty world 
Of eye and ear, both what they half create. 
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize 
In nature and the language of the sense, 
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
Of all my moral being. * 



* Wordsworth, Tintem Abbey. 



THE CRITICISM OF NATURALISM 373 

This sense carries with it the constraining authority of moral 
obligation within. The assumption^ at least of the filial con- 
sciousness, is that what is universally indispensable to well- 
being is true. That which is essential^ therefore, to the main- 
tenance of the highest human life, either individual or collective, 
is none other than the assurance that a holy character, imposing 
upon man the spirit and aims of holy life, is present throughout 
the universe which molds the life of men. The existence of 
the All-holy is the root and justification of holiness in men, 
and the All-holy can only subsist in a character which eternally 
fulfills and upholds the standards and values of the highest 
spiritual nature which it produces and vindicates in the history 
of the world. 

4. Hence by all these ways the Sufficient Eeason of the 
universe is reached. Its quality as well as its quantity and 
force must be taken into account. As the source of causal 
power producing stupendous effects, the possession of un- 
limited energy is required. Herbert Spencer asks that this 
may be reserved to him from the outlying Agnosticism as 
the indispensable minimum necessary to explain the world. 
Those who look upon the universe rather as the home of an 
indwelling and all-pervading rationality, realizing ends and 
maintaining order, are driven to maintain on exactly the 
same grounds upon which the conclusion of Spencer is based, 
that the Supreme Power is rational. Finally, those who 
listen to the highest intuitions of the spiritual life and 
perceive how indispensable those intuitions are to perfecting 
and maintaining the civilized order of the world, which is 
the highest product of evolution, demand on exactly similar 
grounds that the Eational Power by which the world is 
explained should have the holiness of character, which alone 
is adequate to the spiritual and moral results produced; 
above all, to that sense of infinite perfection as the goal of 
human life, which is inseparable from the highest saintliness. 
Such infinite power, reason, character, mean a divine Per- 
sonality, whose highest attribute is love. The whole cogency 
of this argument, whether it establish a Power or a Per- 
sonality as the Sufficient Eeason of the world, is that the 
Source of the universe cannot be less than that which is 



374 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

tnanifested in and to its highest product. Yet, unless the power 
by which all things are explained is personal, the final product 
possesses attributes which we are intuitively compelled to rank 
as of higher dignity and worth than mere power, however vast 
its quantity and immeasurable its effects. It is upon this 
principle that Theism depends for its conclusiveness. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN AND THE EXIST- 
ENCE OF EVIL 

IT is in the light of the considerations advanced in the 
preceding chapter that the cogency of the Argument from 
Design must be estimated. Although some of the ground 
has been covered by the preceding discussion, the case of the 
argument as general^ presented must be examined, and the 
examination will raise definitely many important points which 
have not yet been treated. 

The general objections which have been urged against 
that argument will be considered shortly. Minor objections 
need not occupy attention now, because the whole tendency 
of modern thought has so modified the form in which the 
argument is presented by its more thoughtful upholders, that 
these objections rarely lie against it as at present used. Such 
minor objections relate to the exaggerated attention paid to 
particular instances of contrivance in nature; to the explana- 
tion of these by the representation of the Divine Being rather 
as an external artificer than as the internal source of life and 
order, and incidentally to the frequent overstraining of 
considerations arising from the utility of particular objects 
to the well-being of man. The doctrine of evolution, in what- 
ever form it may be exhibited, has taught us to regard the 
adaptations of vegetable and animal life not as particular 
eases of design inserted in the universe by a special divine 
volition, but as involving the whole process of development 
throughout the universe from first to last. The marks of 
design are now sought not so much in the particular cases of 
adaptation taken b}^ themselves, as in those aspects of the 

375 



376 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

whole process of evolution, which show that the world is a 
system which involves alike, in the whole and in its parts, 
the ordered attainment of ends. In the same way, evolution 
has taught those who lay greatest stress upon the argument 
from design to find the analogies by which it is conceived 
and explained, not in the mechanical contrivances and efforts 
of man, but in the vital processes of nature. These are held 
to reveal an indwelling principle of purposive and ordered 
action, not the activity from outside of a Designer fashioning 
independent material to his will by the mere exercise of 
power. This transformation of our way of regarding the 
matter is a corrective of the exaggerated tendency to regard 
all useful objects as having their existence simply that they 
may satisfy the desires or even the needs of man. This 
tendency erred not so much in what it affirmed as because it 
ignored other elements equally real, if not equally important. 
To say that certain products or phenomena of nature are 
useful and even indispensable in the service of man, while it 
may be true, and may afford a partial explanation of their 
meaning, must not lead us to overlook the fact that they have 
a reason for existence in themselves, and that they are relative 
to other parts of the universe as well as to man. A wider 
teleology should seek to explore the meaning of all these other 
relationships as well as of the one which obtrudes itself upon 
human attention because of its simple and direct relativity 
to man. 

What is most important to perceive in regard to the argu- 
ment from design when embodied in such forms as are in 
harmony with the general lines of modern thought and science, 
is that it can only be presented in a completely satisfying form 
to one who is already and on other grounds a believer in God. 
It must necessarily have greater weight in confirming faith 
than in creating it. The way in which it is presented to one 
who has no belief in God must of necessity tacitly suppress 
many of the vital considerations which are operative in the mind 
of a Theist. 

In the case of such a one, at least three factors are 
present. In the first place, there is the religious consciousness 
of fellowship with a personal God which, as has been seen. 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 377 

takes the form in fully developed Christianity of conscious- 
ness of the divine Fatherhood. This consciousness certainly 
does not and cannot result from the study of the evidences 
of design in nature. Its source and religious explanation lie 
deeper than any such external considerations. At the same 
time this consciousness is itself the mature result of a spiritual 
history. In the case of the individual, it involves the bring- 
ing to maturity of great processes of inward spiritual life. 
The man who attains to it has a consciousness of an ordered 
spiritual growth within himself as real as is to be found in 
the case of any other spiritual faculties and experiences. 
"When he passes from his own interior experience to regard 
the historic development of the Christian consciousness, he 
finds the same marks of ordered development pervading it 
as are present in his own personal consciousness. To take 
only the great spiritual development revealed in the ordered 
advance of the Old Testament and its consummation by the 
New, he becomes aware of a continuous process of spiritual 
preparation and fulfillment. Looking, therefore, both within 
and without in the light of his own religious experience, 
he is face to face with what bears, from beginning to end, 
all the marks of purposiveness. Perhaps, in course of time, 
an inversion of the order in which the design argument is 
generally presented may take place. It has been customary 
to seek for the clear marks of intention in nature, and to 
proceed thence to the consideration of similar aspects in 
the spiritual life. It may well be that in the time to 
come the evidences of design will be sought primarily in the 
spiritual history of mankind, and that the conclusion surely 
based upon these will be extended to solve the problem of 
the physical universe. If this change takes place, it will 
simply make explicit what has been implicit throughout. 
Just as we have seen that every physical explanation is 
primarily subjective in its source, and is powerless to strip 
itself of subjective characteristics, so in the case of 
the argument from design. The eye that scans nature to find 
the marks of a designing intelligence cannot look out upon 
the world apart from the spiritual consciousness, or without 
being affected by the evidence found therein of a divine 



378 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

influence and purpose which, in regard both to the individual 
and to the race, are providential. 

In the next place, in this experienced fellowship with 
God there takes place the development of a selfhood which 
seeks with enlarged power and success all the ends of an 
advancing spiritual, moral, and practical life. The charac- 
teristic of the highest human life is its steadfast purposiveness, 
and the way in which it uses a steadily growing intelligence 
in pursuit of its purposes. Purposiveness is the measure 
of the development of human life. Yet, while the possession 
of this great quality separates man by an ever-growing 
distinction from the inanimate world, it enables him, with 
clearer consciousness and more certain effect, to realize the 
ends which are unmanent in nature. All the powers by 
which he secures his purposes have been supplied to him by 
nature. The very facts of his survival and of his equipment 
reveal the cooperation — if the expression may be allowed — of 
the whole universe with the nature and the ends of man. 
His purposiveness springs out of the dimmer life of instinct, 
while instinct itself is connected with the processes of reaction 
upon stimulus which prevail in nature before instinct appears. 
Purposiveness emerges from something inferior to itself, and 
carries to a completion processes of improvement which have 
prepared the way and led up to the conscious efforts 
of intention. The man who is conscious of God, and is in 
the full possession of human purposiveness, must, in the 
light of his own consciousness of what is most marked in 
himself, and of his relations to God and nature, invest 
the Divine Being with the purposiveness which he finds in 
himself. 

Finally, under these influences he finds himself in presence 
of an outward universe which presents all the features of a 
connected system and of an ordered development. In the clear 
light of his own inward consciousness he explains this universal 
system, with its orderly development, to higher forms of 
being and relationship by means of the spiritual personality 
and the dominant purposiveness which he finds within 
himself. 

The weakness of the argument from design, as it is 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 379 

presented in ordinary theistic controvers}^ is that it neces- 
sarily suppresses the testimony drawn from the spiritual and 
rational consciousness in their mutual connection, and attempts 
to investigate the natural phenomena of the universe from a 
position of complete spiritual detachment. Thus many of 
the considerations which are really operative upon the mind 
of a believer are ruled out from the discussion as it is 
ordinarily carried on. It cannot, therefore, be matter for 
wonder if, as thus circumscribed, the power of the argument 
to produce conviction is less than the ardent believer 
imagined would be the case. That, notwithstanding this, 
it has great cogency must still be contended, though un- 
doubtedly its force as applied in an abstract way to special 
cases of adaptation has been lessened as the result of the 
physical inquiries of Darwin. Its authority, however, cannot be 
reasserted merely by detailed criticism of the arguments and 
conclusions of Darwinism, but by vindication of the place 
which the religious consciousness and its accompanying 
human purposiveness take in the whole order of things, 
and as the necessary key to the complete explanation of that 
order. The double principle of the necessary subjectivity 
of all objective explanation, and of the necessary objectivit}' 
of all that is truly subjective, is the principle upon which 
the universe can be explained. It has been needful to force 
this consideration upon those who supply mere physical 
explanations of the world, and therefore inevitably end in 
Agnosticism. It is equally needful to press it upon those 
Theists whose presentation of the argument from design has 
become inadequate to our latest knowledge, and whose use of 
it fails to make the frankest and fullest use of the spiritual 
consciousness. Such use should be the more readily welcomed 
by the latter because the whole weight of the design argument 
rests upon the inference from the essential activity of man to 
that of God. 

Serious objections are urged against the cogency of the 
argument from design in respect, not merely of accidental draw- 
backs, but of its essential contention. The more philosophic of 
these have been urged by Spinoza and Kant ; the more scientific 
by such physical inquirers as Helmholz. 



380 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

These objections may be summarized as follows — 

In the first place, it is urged that the argument at its 
best can only prove the existence of an Artificer shaping 
given materials to His purposes, and not that of an absolute 
Creator. 

Hence, in the second place, the Divine Artificer, it is argued, 
must bo conceived as limited by the inadequate or even refractory 
nature of the material He uses. 

In the third place, the analogy of human design suggests 
that the Designer makes choice between alternatives, both as 
to the ends He pursues, and the means He adopts for their 
realization. This is held to be contrary to the divine 
perfection. 

Fourthly, the very fact that the Divine Being is conceived 
as pursuing ends by ordered means is held by Spinoza to in- 
volve the attribution to Him of needs which He is moved to 
supply. This, again, is held to be contrary to the eternal and 
unchanging satisfaction which is necessary to the conception 
of God. 

Fifthly, even if these metaphysical difficulties could be set 
aside, it is urged that the argument from design treats things 
as means to ulterior and external ends, and that this is con- 
trary alike to their nature, and to their scientific explanation, 
which makes it impossible to conceive them as means to some- 
thing external to themselves. 

Finally, the force of the alleged facts themselves is, it is 
objected, exaggerated. Moreover, so far as their evidence 
goes, they are contradictory, pointing to opposite conclusions 
as to the character of the Divine Being. This objection has 
three parts, (a) The phenomena instanced as the clearest 
examples of purposive adaptation are faulty. In illustration 
of this the celebrated criticism of Helmholz that any optician 
would be ashamed to turn out so imperfect an instrument as 
the human eye may be cited. (h) Even supposing that 
examples of the apparently purposive can be found in nature, 
these are not its predominant features. The purposeless also 
exists, and has to be accounted for. (c) And, lastly, the 
presence of evil must be recognized. This shows either that 
the Designer of the world is not omnipotent, or that He is 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 381 

not beneficent. This conclusion is the more necessary when 
it is borne in mind that the power of adaptation is equally 
manifest in fitting organisms for destructive as for beneficent 
purposes. 

It is necessary to offer some observations upon each one of 
these objections. 

1. As to the first, it is admitted by the more thoughtful 
upholders of the argument from design that it is inadequate 
in itself to offer any philosophy of creation itself. To isolate 
the argument from all other considerations upon which a 
theistic conclusion is built is as unjust on the part of its 
opponents as it would be unwise on the part of its upholders. 
As Dr. Martineau has pointed out, the force of the argument 
from design is to direct attention to marks of purposive 
action actually present in nature, and to trace them to a 
rational source, not to explain the history which placed them 
there. ^ 

The argument from design taken by itself and in its 
narrowest form is not adequate to support the whole weight 
of Theism. The discussion of the elements found in the 
religious consciousness given in Book II., Chapter ii., is 
sufficient to show that no such view can be held by those 
who regard belief in God as due, not to intellectual inquiry 
as to the scientific explanation of particular phenomena, but 
to the spontaneous and united action of manifold factors in 
the spiritual history by which man attains mature develop- 
ment. The very power to see the marks of the divine mind 
active throughout nature depends upon the influence of these 
permanent factors of spiritual life. The argument, therefore, 
can only be complementary. However great may be its 
force, it only contains within itself a small part of the reasons 
which justify faith in God, and is in itself inadequate to set 
forth either the fullness of the nature of God, or the mode of 
His relationship to the universe, which finds its explanation 
in Him. It is a confirmatory and not a creative argument, 
and its power to confirm the belief in God does not extend 
to the whole content of that belief, but only to particular 
elements of it. Theists, therefore, will be quite content to 

1 See Martineau, A Study of Religion, vol. i. pp. 327, 328. 



382 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

use it for this purpose, and to accept philosophic criticism which 
restrains them from pressing it beyond the due limits both of its 
place among the arguments for Theism, and of its possible tes- 
timony to the nature and action of God. 

2. As to the objection that the conception of design of 
necessity suggests the inadequate or even refractory nature 
of the material used by the Designer, several considerations 
must be borne in mind. It must be conceded that the 
imaginative representation of the human mind is inadequate 
to set forth completely the divine reality. Descriptive state- 
ments of the way in which God attains His creative ends 
must necessarily be colored by the familiar analogies of 
human action. Only thus can they be presented to a mind 
which, while familiar with its own relationship to objects, 
is necessarily unable to conceive, except with the greatest 
imperfection, the relationship in which God stands to His 
works. ^N'owhere, therefore, is there greater need to beware 
of crude anthropomorphism than in the way in which this 
argument is presented. Man, because he is finite and exists 
in a network of relations with objects external to himself, 
is obliged to secure his ends by mechanical means. The 
material which he uses has a nature of its own, independent 
of his will or of his desires. So far, therefore, as he shapes 
it to his own purposes, it must be, roughly speaking, by a 
process of give and take. It is obvious that the relationship 
of God to the world in which He realizes His ends is of a 
totally different character. He is not external to the world 
in the sense that man is external to its material objects, nor 
is matter something originally given to God from outside, 
the adaptation of which constitutes for Him a problem and 
a task. 

Even if creation be explained as involving the setting up 
of a hard-and-fast material world, outside the divine nature, 
and to some extent in independence of it, yet that setting up 
must have been, on the hypothesis, by the direct act of God 
Himself as the first step to the realization of the ends upon 
which His will was set. The setting up of the material, 
therefore, was the preparation of something essential and 
subservient to the divine purpose, and not of something 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 383 

refractory to it. It is true that the limitations of particular 
objects or realms of nature may disqualify them from direct 
participation in some part of the divine purpose which tran- 
scends their inherent limitations. Yet this is not to say they 
have not a divine purpose of their own, or that in the fulfillment 
of it they are not entirely adequate to that which the divine will 
demands of them. 

In short, the divine mind, the divine power, and the divine 
ends are within the universe, both as a whole and in all its 
parts, not merely external to it. Hence, the fulfillment of 
God^s purposes exliibits His sovereignty, not over, but within 
the universe. The attainment of His ends is a manifestation 
of His glory within it by the fulfillment of its own nature, and 
not a triumph over it by the transformation of its nature. 
The securing of the immanent ends of the universe and of its 
several parts does undoubtedly involve the reality of a time- 
process, which must in some way be treated as equally real 
and divine as the changeless eternity of God. The relation 
between the eternal and the temporal, the changeless and the 
progressive, in the reality of the universe is perhaps the most 
difficult problem of philosophy. Yet, while the explanation 
is hard, the facts must not be suppressed. Given that the time- 
process is in its way as real as the eternity of God, then the 
fulfillment of ends in time contains no evidence at all that the 
material used is intractable to the divine hand which accom- 
plishes its purposes by an ordered history, and not merely by 
an eternal act. 

3. The third objection is that the argument from design 
involves that God makes choice between alternatives both 
as to the ends which He purposes, and as to the means 
adopted for their realization, and that such choice is contrary 
to the divine perfection. Here, there seems to be a serious 
confusion of thought. To conceive the divine action as pro- 
ceeding without the deliberate exercise of wUl, or even the 
possibility of such exercise, is to degrade the divine nature 
from spiritual and moral perfection to the level of merely 
natural necessity. This effect may be carefully disguised by 
the forms of speech employed. "We are concerned, how- 
ever, not with the forms of speech but with the realities of 



384 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

existence. To conceive of God as without the power of 
free decision reduces the divine will below the human level. 
Equally to suppose that the infinite possibilities of alternative 
action are hidden from the divine mind is to reduce the 
intelligence of God below that of the human level. Can it be 
conceived that the finite mind is able to imagine all manner 
of worlds differing from the actual, and that such power is to 
be withheld from the divine mind in virtue of its perfection? 
Such a restriction cannot be seriously maintained by any 
one who attaches real significance to the spirituality of the 
divine nature. Yet this does not involve, either that the 
alternatives of possible action are presented to God as laid 
down for Him by conditions independent of Himself, or that 
there is any hesitation or uncertainty in His unfailing and 
eternal choice of that which is best. As to the former of 
these, namely, the presentation of alternatives to the mind 
of God, it is impossible for us to represent to ourselves the 
fundamental difference between the divine consciousness and 
our own. To be able to realize the difference in imagination 
would mean that we had transcended the difference between 
ourselves and God, and had entered into the experience of 
the divine mind. This is absolutely impossible unless we 
could ourselves become God. It is clear that there is the 
greatest distinction between alternatives offered to us by a 
world that already exists and is external to ourselves, and 
alternatives that exist before a world is called into being, and 
that are governed, not by the nature of an external material, 
but by the character of Him who calls it into being. Yet, while 
the divine mind works under conditions totally dissimilar from 
our own, this is no reason for denying to God the vision of 
unrealized possibilities, although the bar to their realization 
lies, not in any external difficulty, but in the divine character 
itself. Different as are the conditions of our own thought, 
circumscribed by the limiting experience of the actual world, 
we can sometimes approach to similar conditions, at least in 
regard to the creations of our own fancy. 

In the same way, while our moral frailty and our temporal 
conditions make it impossible for us adequately to realize the 
nature of the divine perfection, the building up of consistent 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 385 

character within us does enable ns distinctly to conceive the 
conditions under which the divine freedom is exercised. As 
human character is developed, a particular alternative of choice 
and conduct may be so consistently realized in consciousness 
as practically to exclude the adoption of any other alternative 
that is presented to us. Such consistency of choice and action 
determined by character itself is not the negation but the 
perfection of freedom. Formally, freedom involves the un- 
restricted possibility of choice. That formal possibility does 
not become restricted in the course of moral progress. Yet he 
is the freest man whose character exercises unfailing com- 
mand of the motives and resolutions of the will. In this highest 
sense that man is most free whose actions can be most surely 
calculated as unfailingly governed by the laws of goodness. 
What is thus faintly foreshadowed in examples of human 
excellence must be ideally fulfilled in the eternal perfection 
of God. 

4. Just as human nature is an inadequate guide to the 
nature of God, alike in its intellectual and in its moral per- 
fection, so is it also as to the inmost reason which explains 
the divine activity. Spinoza urges that the pursuit of final 
causes involves a need of satisfaction which is contrary to 
the eternal blessedness of God. Again, this would seem to 
press a human analogy in exactly the same way that on other 
occasions Spinoza himself so vigorously condemns. The action 
of man in pursuit of ends is determined by his relatedness to 
the whole world of which he is a finite part. His needs and 
their supply are the effective means by which he is brought 
into the network of those relationships by which his life is 
fulfilled. His action, therefore, is governed by that essential 
relativity. A creature within the cosmos that had no needs 
would be incapable of entering into any relations. His needs 
are for objects outside himself. Yet the very fact that he 
needs these objects, and is able to acquire them, shows that 
both he and they belong to one inclusive system of things 
which prescribes, not only their apartness, but their insepa- 
rable relation. Such conditions, obviously, cannot explain the 
relationship of God to the world which He created. That 
world is the expression of His fullness, not the satisfaction 



38^ THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of His need. Its existence is, in a sense which we cannot 
apprehend, within His own nature, and not merely external to 
it. The action by which it is called into being and sustained is 
an immanent act in the divine life, and not the going forth of 
that life beyond its limits to find or to set up something as the 
object of its satisfaction. Human analogies, therefore, entirely 
fail at this point. 

5. The argument from design by no means necessarily 
involves the treatment of any concrete element of reality 
as a mere means to ulterior and external ends. To say that 
a thing is a means to ends beyond itself is not to say that 
it is a mere means to such ends. The familiar illustration 
of the fertilization of orchids by insects, so often adduced, 
brings this out clearly. It is impossible not to treat the 
insect as a means for producing the required effect upon the 
plant. At the same time it is clear that in producing it 
the insect is not a mere means to an end beyond itself, but is 
satisfying its own need by its characteristic action. Here, as 
in regard to other aspects of the argument, the naive application 
of human analogies needs to be corrected by careful 
reflection. 

The relations of things in nature as means to ends outside 
themselves is determined by two general conditions which 
characterize the universe as a whole. The first is that it 
is the result of a process gradually evolved in time. The suc- 
cession of the time-process is equally real as the unchanging 
"now" of eternity. Change is the concrete content of time. 
Ordered change reveals the presence of purpose so dominating 
change that it becomes evolution. The second is that the 
things which thus come into being in time by an ordered 
process are inter-related as parts of the universal system of 
reality. It is out of these inter-relations of all parts of the 
world's system throughout the process of its temporal evolu- 
tion, that it comes about that one thing may act as a means 
to the ends involved in another. Yet this fact by no means 
entitles us to overlook the truth that each thing is primarily 
fulfilling the ends involved in its own being, and is not 
intended merely to bring about the ends of other beings. 
This fact must be borne in mind when we are brought face 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 387 

to face with the problem that certain living creatures in the 
world seem purely destructive of other and higher forms of 
life. Of some of these it can be clearly shown, that notwith- 
standing their apparent hurtfulness, they have a beneficent 
office to fulfill in the economy of things. Of some it is difficult, 
and perhaps impossible, to affirm this. Yet they must be 
judged not merely by their effect on other beings outside 
themselves, but by their power to fulfill the ends which 
explain their own being. A priori, they have as much 
right to exist and to exercise their distinctive form of activity, 
as has any other kind of being, though undoubtedly the 
fact that they interfere apparently with the self-realization 
of other beings higher than themselves does constitute a 
grave problem in explaining the nature of the world as a 
whole. 

Thus the fact that the universe is an inter-related system 
evolved in time, necessitates the conception that each element 
in it has alike its own ends to fulfill, and its influence upon 
the ends of others, and upon the world-end as a whole. To 
God no kind of being and no state of being is a mere means; 
each has its own place and meaning in the complete system of 
things. None has a place of its own in such wise as to be free 
from the necessity of acting upon other things and being acted 
upon by them, as each and all fulfill the appointed ends 
of their being. 

6. Finally, we pass to the objection that the significance of 
the apparent instances of design is exaggerated, and that their- 
testimony to the being, and still more to the character of God, 
is inconclusive. 

In the first place, the imperfection of even the most con- 
spicuous cases of adaptation in nature is insisted upon, to 
wit, the imperfection of the lenses of the eye as a refracting 
medium, to say nothing of its frailty and liability to disease. 
As to this, two governing considerations must be borne in 
mind. In the first place, if there is to be a system of things 
at all, the nature of the whole must govern the possibilities 
of the parts. "Without going beyond the case of the living 
organisms endowed with power of vision, it is clear that the 
possibilities of the organ of sight must be determined by the. 



388 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION- 

possibilities and needs of the living tissues as a whole. The 
optician can produce a better lens than that of the eye, 
because his lens has not to conform to the conditions of life, 
but simply to the laws of physics. The problem of the human 
eye is to secure the best organ for the practical needs of life 
which is compatible with that organ being alive, and alive 
as part of the human body as a whole. It represents, 
therefore, the most complex case of those limiting conditions 
which are often present in the works of a human inventor. 
For example, the designing of an ironclad represents a whole 
series of compromises with a view to the maximum eflBciency 
of the vessel as a fighting force. The maximum speed, 
the greatest gun-power, the strongest armor, the comfort of 
accommodation, and many other elements have to be adjusted 
and reduced in order to produce a satisfactory whole. To 
any complaint that one or other of these elements shows a 
reduced efficiency the designer replies, correctly or incorrectly, 
that the reduction has been necessary in order to secure a 
greater serviceableness on the whole. The same considera- 
tions apply in an increased measure to the productions of 
life. Of course the question may always be. Why should 
they apply? Yet when clearly considered, such an inquiry 
is irrational. It demands that there should be no finitude 
and no systematic relations in the order of things. It is 
always possible to ask why this or that finite creature was not 
equal to the infinite Creator. Why should there be a system 
of things at all? Yet such questions are in reality meaning- 
less. Even if it were not so, they emphasize the one attribute 
of power at the expense of all those other attributes of the 
Divine Being which play their part in the constitution and 
order of the world. The very imperfections inherent in a 
physical constitution, for example, have manifold bearings 
upon the possibilities of the world from the spiritual and 
moral standpoint. Just as in the case of an organism 
the interests of life limit in some directions the abstract pos- 
sibilities of physics, so the spiritual and moral interests, which 
in our conception, are the supreme motive of God, limit 
the conditions of purely physical life. The world as a whole 
must be judged, so far as we are capable of judging it, by 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 389 

its adaptation to the highest end revealed in it, and not by its 
fulfillment of lower ends, which if pressed to the utmost of 
their abstract possibilities, might be unfriendly to, or even 
effectually shut out, the higher. Such a principle of explana- 
tion is laid down for us by the combined influence of the 
spiritual interests and of the finite limitations of the universe 
as we know it. 

Again, it is objected, that if there are outstanding causes 
of the apparently purposive, there is an even vaster range 
of the apparently purposeless. What has been said about 
means and ends in nature must certainly be applied to this 
consideration. The objection, if well taken, may minimize 
the force and range of the design argument, but need not 
imply the disparagement of Theism. Each object of the 
world, as has been seen, has its own place in, and right to, 
existence, even if that existence point to no purpose beyond 
itself either in time or space. Waiving this point, however, 
the universe must be treated as a whole. The question must 
be asked of it, therefore, whether or not there are signs 
within it of great ends being carried out for which spiritual 
character in its Source is indispensable. If that be so, the 
apparently purposeless may be explained on two grounds, 
apart from its own inherent power to exist. It may be the 
basis of the more obviously purposeful; standing out in 
apparent contrast to it, but in reality constituting the indis- 
pensable conditions of its existence. Again, even within 
such a system, it may be impossible to avoid the presence 
of the purposeless here and there as a sort of by-product of 
the universe in fulfilling its divine end. Here and there 
throughout the universe there may be some residual existences 
which cannot be explained as desirable either in themselves 
or in the interests of others. The presence of such accidental 
existences may, for all we know, be inseparable from the 
possibility of there being a world at all. If this be so, the 
fact would indeed be contrary to our abstract conceptions 
of the omnipotence of God. It by no means follows, however, 
that it need be derogatory to any true conception of the 
divine perfection, which, in carrying out the designs of 
supreme spiritual goodness and wisdom, takes upon itself 



390 THE CHRISTIAN- RELIGION 

the incidental disadvantages to mere power which such spiritual 
purposes involve. 

It is, however, contended that, even supposing the case as 
presented from the argument from design be true, yet the pres- 
ence of evil throughout the world proves that its Designer is 
either not beneficent or not omnipotent. The force of this 
dilemma must be considered subsequently. Meanwhile, it is 
necessary to consider what is meant by the presence of evil in 
the world, and what is its force as reducing or destroying the 
essential goodness of the universe. 

Evil is of two kinds, moral and physical. From the point 
of view of the argument from design it is unnecessary to 
deal at length with the problem of moral evil, and for a 
simple reason. If such evil be truly moral and not the 
merely automatic result of physical conditions, then it pro- 
ceeds from the fact and from the abuse of personal freedom. 
If personal freedom be non-existent, then evil is conditioned 
by as purely natural a necessity as is the fall of the apple 
to the earth. In that case the same general conditions that 
explain physical evil must apply to what, by a human 
illusion, has been supposed to be the result of free and 
responsible choice. If, on the other hand, the universal 
instinct of mankind, which apportions praise or blame to 
individuals alike, through the deliverances of their own 
consciousness and through the judgment of their fellow men, 
be valid, then this fact points to the existence of an uncon- 
ditioned power of free choice between good and evil. If this 
be true, the gift of moral freedom, with its attendant risks 
and actual ill consequences, must be justified by totally 
different considerations from those which are involved in 
the question of design. The problem has to do, not with 
the inefficiency of a machine, but with the deliberate intro- 
duction into the system of things of beings who are not 
machines. 

Several considerations, however, must be borne in mind 
in qualification and explanation of the existence of this 
personal moral freedom. To begin with, the individual has 
his place in an historic development. The working out in 
the world of this historic process depends for its possibility 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 391 

upon two forces — ^heredity and influence. Unless both of these 
are present, history is impossible. Therefore the existence of 
moral freedom in the individual is limited by the inheritance 
which he receives as part of his nature, and by the influence 
which is exerted upon him by means of the whole social environ- 
ment, and especially by that of the family. Hence, it is in- 
evitable that the influences that make for good and for evil 
should impartially aifect alike the nature and conditions of 
each free moral personality. 

Again, man considered as a free individual not only has 
his place in an historic process, but exercises his freedom 
under the limitations of bodily life. Moral and physical 
conditions apparently act and react upon one another. The 
causes which predispose to moral evil may often be sought 
in physical degenerac}^, just as on the other hand moral 
evil has manifold effect in deteriorating physical conditions, 
which then in their turn react unfavorably upon the moral 
disposition. 

Again, moral personality is something which at best has 
not come into complete being, but is struggling for exist- 
ence. The emergence from the predominantly animal to the 
predominantly human may be witnessed in the growth of every 
healthy infant. It is witnessed in the gradual advance made 
by the human race in its infancy. It is a process which 
shows steady but slow advance throughout the history of 
civilization. The whole course of that history is summed 
up in the great principle of St. Paul that first is that which 
is natural and afterward that which is spiritual. If potential 
freedom is a distinctive human endowment, actual freedom 
is a costly achievement. The course of history represents the 
effort to secure that freedom and to provide such conditions for 
its exercise as will influence its decisions on the side of well- 
being and not the reverse. 

Finally, the consideration of this subject is peculiarly 
liable to exaggeration caused by a false abstraction. The 
evil of certain epochs of history and of certain human 
characters is so outstanding as to blot out all impressions 
of the underlying and the surrounding good. Good men 
are troubled with the evil of their own heart, with the 



392 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

consciousness of sin. It becomes natural under such two- 
fold influences to speak not only of universal depravity, but 
of total depravity. Yet such language represents a false 
abstraction. The very consciousness of sin implies that the 
depravity is not total, or the sense of sin would be destroyed. 
The Christian penitent will reply that he owes this conscious- 
ness of sin and the power of turning from it to divine grace. 
Yet such grace must operate upon and within human nature 
itself. The very fact that it does so is clear proof that some- 
thing exists within human nature which is akin to the grace 
that transforms it. And, from the broader point of view, 
not of the spiritual experience of the individual but of 
human life generally, the bare power to exist depends upon 
certain possibilities of good which, if they are destroyed, 
lead to immediate decay and prompt extinction. The race is 
maintained not by its wickedness but by its potentialities of 
goodness. The pessimism which accompanied the decay of the 
Roman Empire evolved the great doctrine of Augustine, and in 
some respects touched the whole of Western theology with an 
excessive gloom which obscured many of the most real and im- 
portant elements of the case. The very sense of moral evil, in 
fact, betokens underlying spiritual good, and is the witness to a 
great force of spiritual and moral progress inherent in the very 
life of mankind. It is the divine spur and inspiration to the 
highest efforts of moral freedom. 

All these considerations must be borne in mind in dealing 
with the problem of moral evil and its bearing upon Christian 
Theism. Freedom with its risks is essential to personality. 
Freedom is exerted under the conditions of a time-process. 
Freedom, while in one sense the starting-point, is in another 
the highest goal of human development. To that develop- 
ment man is urged forward, not only by the ideals and incentives 
of good, but by the pressure of the sense of evil. Hence, the 
presence of this sense, while at first sight it seems to be evidence 
of the downfall of a divine purpose, is equally a sign of the 
persistence of that purpose, wrought out by means of the 
spiritual evolution which utilizes the forces of moral freedom to 
supersede the flesh by the spirit. 

As to the existence of evil, which is other than moral, 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 393 

the following general remarks must be made. It is necessary 
to admit its existence, and further to admit that it is at 
present, in some respects, at least, inexplicable. To attempt 
to deny the reality of evil by assuming that it only appears 
to men to be evil owing to the finitude of their nature, is 
to disparage the significance of their practical experience. The 
integrity of this necessitates the sense of the reality of evil, 
which it is the business of all true progress to overcome. The 
idealism which considers itself entitled to set aside this char- 
acteristic consciousness would similarly feel at liberty to in- 
validate any other deliverance of human experience according 
to its wUl. 

Yet, while insisting that the reality of evil in the universe 
must not be explained away, it must further be contended 
that its influence is not predominant; but, on the contrary, 
that it is so subordinate as not to set aside the general results 
reached by the Christian consciousness. The fact, after all, 
is that in this world, beset by evil, the revelation of the 
fatherly love of God has been made, that it has been accepted 
by faith and verified by the spiritual and moral results of 
a life built up upon that faith. Moreover, we owe to the 
sufferers of the human race in a peculiar degree the fact that 
this faith has become so influential in human conscious- 
ness, and has received so profound a verification in spiritual 
experience. Those who have done most to exemplify the 
faith in the Fatherhood of God have been those whose hearts 
were most oppressed by the fact of evil, and whose lives were 
most fully exposed to its influence. Out of the depths of 
their own experience they have discovered a power in the 
divine love, which they have apprehended, to trans- 
mute the experience of evil into a means of spiritual and moral 
advancement, so that suffering has enlarged, instead of 
narrowing, the sphere of their spiritual inheritance. An 
altered spiritual relationship to evil has revealed what is 
inmost in it as a power subordinating to the ends of holiness 
and love. 

The following considerations must also be borne in mind. 
To a great extent even physical evil is consequent upon mis- 
conduct, or upon the mistakes which follow upon ignorance 



394 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

or carelessness. It acts as a spur to knowledge, and a pre- 
ventive of carelessness. In the next place, such suffering as 
is not due to the misconduct or ignorance of the individual is 
frequently consequent upon the conditions which we have 
seen to be absolutely essential if there is to be a world at all. 
And, finally, much of the evil which exists in the world is 
distinctly bound up with the principle and the possibility of 
good. For example, the evil of bodily pain is constantly 
cited as disproving either the beneficence or the omnipotence 
of God. Yet, when more carefully considered, very important 
considerations become apparent, which set aside this inference. 
To begin with, the existence of pain is essential in our finite 
experience to the possibility of pleasure. A nature exempt 
from the liability to pain would similarly be insensible 
to pleasure. The experience of each is enhanced by contrast 
with the other. Moreover, the great bulk of suffering in 
the world is prophylactic, the necessary warning against 
encountering danger or the judgment upon unnatural con- 
ditions which is necessary if those conditions are to be 
remedied. That the incidence of the suffering often falls 
upon those who are guiltless in respect of the infrac- 
tion of natural law which entails it, does not create an insuper- 
able difficulty when the essential conditions of heredity and 
influence to which reference has just been made are borne 
in mind. Moreover, the existence of evil has acted as a 
powerful stimulant to that redemptive activity for the race 
and for the individual which has been the very nerve of 
progress. It has operated further to discipline character. 
From the spiritual standpoint, many of the greatest and 
noblest of the human race have found a beneficent purpose 
more clearly manifested in suffering than anywhere else. 
With St. Paul they have "gloried in tribulations," not 
only as offering to them the opportunity of that vicarious suf- 
fering which deepens the sense of human fellowship, but also 
for the spiritual benefit which tribulation has brought. In 
short, suffering has been condemned chiefly from the standpoint 
of the animal, and not from that of the spiritual, nature. So 
far as we can realize, the dismissal of suffering from the 
economy of human life would, under its present conditions. 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 395 

extinguish the possibilities of saintliness and heroism in favor 
of the establishment of man as a successful rational animal, so 
called. Man's peculiar liability to suffering is largely due to 
spiritual causes, and exists for spiritual ends. 

Hence the problem of suffering is greatly reduced on both 
the human and the animal side. In respect to man, it is 
entailed by, and essential to, the higher possibilities of his 
nature. Add to this that the intensity of his suffering is 
largely due, not to physical, but to mental causes, to imagina- 
tion, to apprehension of consequences of all kinds, and to 
anticipation. Destroy all these elements, and suffering is 
reduced to a mere physical spasm. It is as this that it 
exists for the most part among the lower animals. No doubt 
there are graver cases even among them which call for special 
consideration; but, speaking generally, and omitting the 
liability to special diseases, the fact of suffering is as essential 
to animal efficiency as it is to the higher possibilities of human 
character. There is from the merely animal standpoint a 
ministry of suffering which conduces not only to the develop- 
ment, but even to the happiness of the animal creation. In 
short, the more carefully we pursue an unprejudiced inquiry 
the more it becomes apparent that it would be impossible to 
have a painless world without so entirely destroying all the 
characteristics of the world we know that we have no means 
of realizing what such a world would be like, let alone of 
estimating whether it would be desirable or whether it would 
be possible. In respect of this aspect of existence, Butler's 
great principle that this world represents a scheme imperfectly 
comprehended by man, is particularly in point. Not that it 
should cause us to acquiesce in a difficulty without seeking 
to explore it, but it should at least deter us from raising 
objections which assume a total overthrow of all the conditions 
of a spiritual and moral life, and make the irrational claim 
that man and the animal world are to be delivered from all 
the conditions of finitude, involving as they do the possibility 
of history, of society, and, therefore, even of vicarious 
suffering. 

There are, however, four cases in regard to evil which 
call for special examination. They are as follows: (1) Cases 



396 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

where apparent purpose appears to be either abortive or only 
incompletely fulfilled. (2) Cases where the purpose fulfilled 
in nature appears to be one of deliberately causing pain. 
(3) Cases where the purposes involved in different forms of 
existence appear to be mutually destructive. (4) Cases where 
the apparently purposeless in nature, or what is at least inferior 
in the worth of its purposefulness, interferes with the fulfillment 
of the purpose involved in the existence of what is higher 
than itself. 

It is impossible to deal exhaustively here with the 
problems which are involved. The reader may be referred 
to Martineau's Study of Religion for a very full treatment 
of many of the questions raised. Some comment, however, 
must be made on each of the four objections which have been 
raised. 

1. The first is that of the cases where apparent purpose 
appears to be either abortive or only incompletely fulfilled. 
There are many instances of this apparent failure. Only a 
small proportion of seeds, for example, comes to maturity. 
The promise of fruit in the spring is only incompletely realized 
in the summer. In the higher region of animal life there are 
many kinds of deformity; and individuals depart in all 
manner of ways from the standards of ideal excellency. Even 
the type changes; and while this, on the whole, represents a 
tendency to improvement, made possible by a large measure 
of stability, yet a considerable measure of instability remains. 
The highest forms of excellence are often the most delicate, 
and nature seems to have set herself against the speedy 
attainment of too high an ideal by the peculiar tendency to 
lapse into unfruitfulness which attends all her rarer products. 
In addition, there is the impossibility of complete adjustment 
to an environment which, owing to the unceasing changes 
of the world, constantly varies, and hence suffering results. 
It is clear, however, that the objections raised on moral or 
rational grounds against these apparent drawbacks are largely 
founded on an abstract and arbitrary principle. The better 
is throughout treated as the enemy of the good. It is claimed 
that the nearest approach to absolute perfection should be a 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 397 

law universal, by which all are condemned who do not attain 
to it. Such a principle would, indeed, if adopted, condemn 
the whole process of evolution by which the world has been 
built up. It is not, perhaps, possible to rule out such a 
universal objection; but, at least, we who are entirely con- 
ditioned by the evolutionary process have no means of 
estimating the possibility or judging the merits of any 
imaginary world to which the principles of this world are 
altogether inapplicable. \Ye can condemn the dull child by 
comparison with the genius, yet to do so involves two mis- 
takes. In the first place, it judges him solely by what is 
above, and not, also, by what is beneath him. In the next 
place, it generally overlooks the value of those common and 
homely characteristics to which nature and, perhaps, true 
insight, attach greater worth than to the rare eminence of 
genius. In another way our judgments are often faulty. 
So far as can be observed, certain types of physical infirmity 
seem closely bound up with certain forms of spiritual or 
intellectual superiority. We do not know why this is the 
case, but before we condemn the system of the world on 
the score of physical frailty in these cases, we must put 
to its credit the spiritual and intellectual excellence which 
compensates. 

At every point of human endowment it is possible for us 
to ask the question. Why not more ? But, at least, the process 
exemplified in nature seems to show that what is sought is a 
gradual improvement of the common level, and that the rarer 
qualities are flashed upon the world rather as a transient 
illumination to guide the general body in its advance than 
as a permanent endowment given to a few select individuals 
for their own benefit or for that of a caste. And if all cannot 
be infinitely perfect, surely this method has more to 
justify it, especially on the ground of universal beneficence, than 
any other. 

In addition, moreover, to the manifold compensations 
which abound, the very risks to which human life is exposed 
in the attainment of its ends are providentially used to 
increase the care which is taken for its conditions, and to 
widen the range of that care, till it embraces the community 



398 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

as a whole. They constitute also a commanding smnmons 
to the energy by which evil is overcome. It may be 
answered that if the evil did not exist, the energy would 
not be required. Yet this is to set aside all our standards 
of human value, for it is by putting forth this energy, com- 
bined with rational and sympathetic care, that man emerges 
from the animal to the spiritual. When all this has been 
said, however, there remains the fact that life, according 
to the measure of its development, and especially human life, 
is liable to peculiar dangers. When the infinite complexity 
of the conditions which determine it are taken into account, 
it will not seem remarkable that in a proportion of cases 
the result seems to miscarry. It is impossible to deny the 
existence of this very real and sometimes perplexing evil. 
All that can be done, probably, at the present is to affirm 
that the moral conditions of human freedom are often 
accountable for the worst cases, that their possibility is an 
incidental disadvantage, and that it is bound up with a 
liability to variation, which, on the whole, results in the 
improvement of the species. Finally, however painful some 
of the cases may be when looked at in isolation, they are 
so subordinate in the whole system of things that they 
cannot set aside the impression created by its prevailing 
tendencies and results. 

The prodigality of nature raises considerations of a different 
kind. The seed, for example, which never fructifies, fulfills ends 
of a different kind in the whole order of things. In short, the 
judgment based upon each thing in the world must include 
the careful estimate of its place in the whole order of things, 
including not only the fulfillment of its own immanent end, 
but the assistance which it affords to the fulfillment of the 
ends of others. 

2. The second ease is that where the purpose fulfilled 
in nature appears to be one of deliberately causing pain. 
The instances of this are rare, but they are real. There 
are animals in nature which not merely kill their victims, 
but kill them with excruciating tortures. Even allowing 
that no objection can be taken to the killing, what is to 
be said of the attendant torture, which is not apparently 



THE AEGUMENT FROM DESIGN 399 

essential to the killing? Probably this problem is at present 
insoluble, for the answer to it involves a completer under- 
standing of the process of evolution, and what is involved 
in it, than we at present possess. At least the difficulty 
is relieved by the admission of the principle of evolution. 
On the supposition of a direct and special creation of such 
instruments of torture, the difficulty would be increased. 
The feature in question is bound up with the presence in 
the universe of that principle of individuality which is 
prophesied in the lower forms of existence, and which 
not only binds the individual up with a universal order, but 
makes his very individuality, real as it is, part of 
that universal system. Thus the possibility of a creature 
equipped to torture its victims appears to be bound up with 
the possibility of all those higher forms of specialized exist- 
ence, upon the appearance of which in the world alike its 
manifoldness and its improvement depend. Of course a 
heightened impression as to such rare cases of adaptation to cause 
suffering is produced by the vividness of human imagination, 
and by the modern exaggeration of the evil of mere physical 
pain. The difficulty is, however, real, though the increase of 
knowledge may largely explain it away, unless utter pessi- 
mism prevails, and principles be adopted which would make 
the existence of any animate world at all absolutely im- 
possible. 

3. The third case raised is that of mutual interference so 
that the ends contemplated in one particular form of life 
are interfered with by those sought by others. Almost all 
the predatory phenomena of animal life are included under 
this head. While once more it may be impossible with our 
present knowledge completely to explain or justify this 
aspect of the world, the following general considera- 
tions must be borne in mind. The strife in nature is non-moral ; 
it no more involves moral considerations than does a dis- 
turbance of the elements. Further, it is clearly productive 
of the highest efficiency. That life should be endangered is 
necessary if life is to be progressive. Moreover, the purpose 
involved in competing forms of animal life, while it renders 
them in a minor sense mutually destructive, in a much more 



400 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

important sense makes them mutually helpful. If the 
strength and fierceness of the tiger threatens the weakness of 
the deer, it tends to develop its swiftness, circumspection, and 
elusiveness. The qualities which make the perfection of the 
deer are thus due in a large measure to the presence of the 
tiger, and the animal finds pleasure in the possession and 
exercise of its own distinctive characteristics. The penalty 
may eventually be paid, but the enjoyment has been lifelong, 
and if death is to occur at all, it may, probably, from the 
animal point of view, be as desirable from the tiger as from 
any other cause. 

It may be added, as Dr. Martineau has elaborately shown, 
that animal life, with its prolific increase and its mortality, 
would be impossible on a limited planet unless these predatory 
habits prevailed. 

4. The last case is that of the interference of what is seemingly 
purposeless, or at best, inferior in the worth of the purpose it 
fulfills, with purposes of higher value. 

As examples of this, the destruction of a young or 
influential life by the bacillus of a deadly disease, the 
destruction of a city by an earthquake, or the deterioration 
of a race by an enervating climate, may be cited. It is 
impossible to deny the reality of the evil in any one of these 
cases. Yet before the evil of such effects is used as an 
argument against Christian belief, careful investigation should 
be made as to whether in each case the evil is not bound 
up with attendant good. From the individual standpoint 
there is, in the light of Christian consciousness, comparatively 
little diSiculty; for an essential feature of that conscious- 
ness is the permanence of the spiritual self, and the conviction 
that this world, with its changes and chances, is but the 
threshold of a higher and eternal form of existence. The 
whole appearance of catastrophes, whether to the individual 
life or to the life of multitudes, wears a different look 
according as it is judged in the light of belief in immortality 
or the reverse. 

Looked at, however, simply from the standpoint of 
earthly life, it is clear that important considerations must 
be borne in mind before the poignancy of human tragedy 



I 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 401 

is allowed to affect our judgment of the world. The general 
conditions of our transitory life and of its exposure to danger 
are undoubtedly essential to the moral training of the race as 
a whole. The incidence of the penalty of ignorance or care- 
lessness here or there is undoubtedly a mystery, only to be 
resolved by remembering that human life is that of a com- 
munity, and is not to be judged by an exclusively individual 
standard. From this broader standpoint it is clear that the 
uncertainty of human life acts as a motive to strenuousness, 
that the dangers to which it is exposed conduce to circumspec- 
tion and courage, while in cases where exposure to such danger 
is habitual it ceases to have any noticeable effect in diminishing 
the happiness of life. 

All the finer characteristics of the race would remain un- 
developed were it not for the pressure of earthly imperfection 
upon the spiritual life. Indeed, it may not be pressing the 
matter too far if we regard the liability to such catastrophes 
as confirmatory evidence of the truth of immortality. What 
seems contrary to a mundane conception of divine beneficence 
may be seen to be in reality part of that beneficence, if on 
general grounds we are allowed to assume that God has a higher 
career in store for man than that of being a successful and 
contented animal. In that case He deliberately prepares the 
spirit to seek after immortality, considered not merely as a 
survival after death, but as the fruition of spiritual promise. 
The counterpart of that desire is that man should find himself 
a stranger and pilgrim on the earth, and this consciousness 
could not be developed were his environment so satisfying and 
stable as to leave no room for the desire of a higher and more 
abiding blessedness. 

As to race deterioration, several important qualifications 
must be borne in mind. Certain races are condemned, not by 
an absolute standard, but in comparison with those progressive 
peoples to whom it would appear that the future of the 
world has been committed. It must be remembered, however, 
that we are on very doubtful ground when we assume that 
any such absolute election has been given to any particular 
race. The emergence of Japan, for example, from barbarism 
to many of the highest standards of human efficiency, shows 



402 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

how uncertain such forecasts are. Moreover, there is place in 
the world for lower as for higher races, if all the manifold 
possibilities of human life are to be realized. Distinct excel- 
lences which tend to be sacrificed in the more successful often 
flash out among the less successful. And, further, the effect of 
the interaction of races in the world's history may in the end 
largely explain what is now incomprehensible simply because 
it is incomplete. Movements are at the present time taking 
place throughout the world by which the spiritual and moral 
gains of the superior races are gradually being shared with the 
inferior. Sometimes the inferior cannot bear this improvement, 
and pass away; as is the case, for example, with many of the 
Red Indian tribes in North America. Yet there is really no 
more mystery, so far as the righteousness of the world-order is 
concerned, in the disappearance of a race than in the disappear- 
ance of an individual, while the disappearance of an inferior 
type is of practically small account so far as the case of human 
progress as a whole is concerned. 

All these considerations mitigate, though they do not fully 
explain, these apparent drawbacks of human life. Above all, 
for the Christian, such drawbacks are judged by the help of 
that characteristic consciousness which transmutes evil by an 
inner experience into good. That which when externally 
presented in anticipation, or in the life of another seems 
wholly bad, is constantly found as inwardly experienced to 
work for good. This testimony of the filial consciousness 
cannot be dismissed as illusory by any one who has really 
felt it. To him it is an assurance that the Fatherhood of 
God, in the consciousness of which his own life becomes 
complete, will in the end provide the interpretation of 
those elements of life which seem evil chiefly when they are 
separated in thought from the whole texture of experience, 
individual and collective, and judged in the false abstraction 
which results. 

Finally, it is by help of this consideration that the 
foreboding of death is relieved of its terror. From the stand- 
point of nature, it is the correlative of birth, and man, being 
what he is, is indispensable to the whole economy of life as 
we know it. Judged from the higher spiritual standpoint^ 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 403 

it cannot be purposeless. Christian faith apprehends this, and 
prepares to meet it, fortified by the experience which has dis- 
covered, stage by stage, that all things work together for good 
to them that love God. 

From a general survey of the whole difficulty, it would 
appear, therefore, that the dilemma that God is either not 
beneficent or not omnipotent is entirely inconclusive. It is 
the existence of pain, and of all that centers in pain, that is 
held to force upon us this alternative. Yet it is clear that, 
taken on the whole, pain is advantageous, especially judged 
from the standpoint of the higher interests of the world. In 
so far as this may be presumed, the existence of pain cannot 
be used either as an argument against either the beneficence 
of God or His omnipotence. As to the former, it is probably 
ordained because He is beneficent. As to the latter, mere 
power is not the divinest of attributes, but only power which 
so ordains the conditions of existence that they attain at the 
necessary cost the highest ends. On the whole, it must be 
urged that we see enough to give us the promise that this is 
the case with our world, though not sufficient to enable us to 
clear up mysteries which are due to the finitude of our com- 
prehension, to our inability to foresee the complete life-history 
of any individual, and to the incompleteness of a tale which is 
at present not half told. All this, however, is not adequate 
to the Christian consciousness in its most characteristic expres- 
sions. In presence of the mystery of evil, three influences 
shape the attitude of those who most completely reflect that 
consciousness. In the first place, the recognition of the wisdom 
and love which are clearly to be seen working within, and 
utilizing much that appears on the surface to be evil. In the 
second place, a deep sense of the way in which spiritual and 
moral evil is bound up with the whole physical conditions 
of life and determines them. The explanation of the con- 
nection is sought through the spiritual, and not through the 
merely natural. Hence, finally, the confidence of the Chris- 
tian consciousness points to the certainty of the passing away 
of evil when the work of redemption and of spiritual evolution 
is perfected. Thus the deep sensitiveness to the poignancy of 
evil, which, after the example of Christ Himself, has been the 



404 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

mark of the most t5rpical representatives of the Christian life, 
gives rise to a stronger assurance of the completeness with which 
redemption will be wrought out, and of the consequent explana- 
tion why evil has been permitted. 

It is now possible to sum up the results of this whole 
discussion. It has proceeded throughout upon the following 
fundamental principles: (1) That man, with his characteristic 
spiritual faculties, cannot be isolated from the whole texture 
of the universe to which he belongs; (2) that it is of his 
spiritual faculties alone that he has immediate knowledge; 
(3) that of these faculties the religious consciousness and 
the pursuit of ends are the most influential; (4) that in con- 
sequence of his organic relation to the world, he of necessity 
interprets it by means of these two distinctive faculties; 
(5) that however narrowly he may confine the power of human 
reason to explain the world, some measure of explanation is 
admitted as valid because it is necessary to the scientific and 
practical interests of life; (6) that such limited explanations 
are as distinctively subjective as those which are criticized and 
rejected, and in especial are of necessity marked by exactly 
those anthropomorphic features from which Agnosticism seeks 
to escape; (7) that, therefore, there is at least equal authority 
for the application of these principles in their fullest as in 
their narrower range, provided that they are purged by 
reflection from those elements which are clearly incidental to 
man's finitude and dependence; (8) that, therefore, since 
nature exists as relative and subordinate to the spiritual 
purposes which are growingly manifest in history, the spiritual 
consciousness which comes to its maturity in the experience 
of divine sonship contains the key to the meaning and 
constitution of the world — all the postulates, axioms, 
and principles which are essential to any explanation of the 
world implying relations between God, man, and nature, of 
which the filial consciousness is the supreme expression and 
experience; (9) that the existence of evil, while to some extent 
an inexplicable mystery, is in many respects seen to subserve 
the highest spiritual purposes which are being wrought out in 
the world, and that that which remains unexplained is insuffi- 
cient to set aside the testimony borne by the spiritual, moral, and 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 405 

rational consciousness to the personality, spirituality, and love 
of God. 

From all these principles it follows that the characteristic 
life of men, including religious aspirations and experience, 
purposiveness, reason, and affection, proceeds from, and is the 
manifestation of, the infinite and eternal perfection of God, 
which unites nature and man in the organic whole of the 
universe. This whole receives its laws out of the fullness 
of the divine life, which goes forth in the creative and 
ordering activity by which alone can the world be explained. 
The personality of man, in its characteristic relations to 
God and to the world, is the witness to the personality 
of God. 

A few concluding remarks are all that is necessary to add 
upon this part of the subject. 

In the first place, these principles and the conclusions 
resulting from them supply the presumptions with which the 
evidence for the existence of the miraculous must be explained. 
Those who make any approach to the adequate realization of 
the immanence of God will not find the evidence of His activity 
predominantly in the exceptional. To do so would be to 
disparage the weight of the testimony to the being and nature 
of God, which is found in the essential facts of spiritual life 
in its relations to the universe as a whole. At the same time, 
miracles cannot be pronounced to be impossible by a convinced 
Theist, to whom the whole natural order of the world appears 
to be subordinate to supreme spiritual purpose. Such a man 
will rightly be careful to criticize the evidence adduced to 
prove the reality of such exceptional events. He will not fail 
to use the powers of reflection to discover how far such events 
are due to the operation of spiritual forces, securing their 
supremacy by operating in accordance with, and not in con- 
travention of, the order of the world. But he will approach 
the evidence with a subjective view as to the probability of 
such occurrences largely determined by the belief which he 
entertains — 

(1) As to the spirituality of the universe, its infinity, and the 
indwelling of God throughout the whole. 

(2) As to the importance of the alleged miracle in relation 



406 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

to the spiritual purposes which the history presents to him as 
being wrought out in the world. 

(3) As to the meaning and power of human personality in 
its possible mastery over the merely natural. Such considera- 
tions are of peculiar weight, for example, in Judging the evidence 
which is offered of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, 
Since in Him is found the unique manifestation both of the 
spiritual purpose of the world and of a transcendent spiritual 
personality. 

The conclusions which have been reached in this inquiry are 
corrective of that sense of the vastness of nature and of the 
insignificanee of man which paralyzes faith and the confident 
pursuit of knowledge. It has been apparent that nature is pre- 
sented to man as an ordered and intelligible whole only in virtue 
of his rational and practical faculties. These at once transcend 
nature, and are one with it. Hence all world-interpretation, 
however limited, must needs be in terms of human reason. Yet 
that reason is not self-explanatory, but in the process of evolu- 
tion emerges within the universe, and has the sense of dependence 
upon its Source. We have therefore been driven to the conclu- 
sion that the place of reason in nature can be explained only on 
the ground that an infinite and absolute Mind and Will 
constitutes and sustains the whole. 

The vaster the universe, the vaster is the Mind which thus 
creatively organizes it. Yet it is equally certain that the 
Supreme Mind which thus organizes it, and the finite mind, 
which explores its meaning and utilizes it when organized, are 
one, although the testimony of the spiritual nature in man 
affirms, as we have seen, personal distinction within the unity. 
Hence the position of finite reason in the universe cannot be 
as precarious as modem pessimism fears, or as materialism 
supposes. The contrast between the vast extent of the universe 
and the minute physical organism of man offers in itself 
no ground for any conclusion favorable or unfavorable to 
the worth or permanence of personal existence. These mat- 
ters must be tried by altogether different standards. Above 
all, they must be judged by the place of reason in the 
whole. 

The result of our inquiry has been to vindicate the 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 407 

supremacy of Eeason alike as the Source and meaning of all 
things, and as the highest result of the creative process. The 
kinship, therefore, of human personality with the absolute 
Eeason which explains the world is the measure of its impor- 
tance; and the appreciation of this fact enables the intellect to 
take its part in repelling those doubts and fears which are the 
sign of human weakness and not of strength. 

The apparent impersonality of the methods of the universe 
is indeed urged against this conclusion. To this it must be 
replied that all systematic arrangement, even in the activities 
of men, tends to become impersonal in exactly the same 
sense as is alleged against nature. In short, such imperson- 
ality in fixed order and general arrangement is necessary to 
the highest triumph of personality itself in shaping human 
progress. In the same way the inner development of human 
character is only possible by the formation of habits. Habit 
tends to become an automatic law; though the action of 
personality within it is never for a moment suppressed. 
Such analogies are of course imperfect, yet they are not 
altogether without worth as showing in the limited field of 
individual human life how reasonable and indeed essential 
to its highest ends is the method which appears to be that of 
God in nature. The analogy stretches further indeed than 
might at first appear; for just as man's ordered systems of 
automatic habits are the conditions of his effort in realizing 
new and higher ends, so in the universe the establishment of 
a lower order has been the precondition to the appearance within 
it of higher manifestations of purpose. Thus after the natural 
come the spiritual, exhibiting an ordered and comprehensive 
progress towards ever nobler and more universal forms of 
being. 

The difficulty, then, is inherent in all system, and especially 
in such organic systems as the phenomena of life display. In 
addition to all this, the testimony of the spiritual conscious- 
ness to personal intercourse with and to special assistance by 
God cannot be dismissed lightly. Within the system which 
ever more clearly manifests its spiritual aim and meaning, 
those who stand in line with this divine intention have been 
conscious in all ages and under all conditions of assistance 



408 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

which they have unfailingly attributed to divine succor. Were 
the whole interpretation of the world such as to invalidate the 
general belief in the existence of God, such impressions of 
spiritual persons might easily be dismissed as purely subjective 
fancies. But in proportion as the evidence is the other way, 
such impressions acquire a high degree of trustworthiness, and 
become an invaluable means for filling out the doctrine of 
God and of His relationship to the spiritual world, individual 
and collective, which a general survey of the facts supplies. 
Any view, therefore, of the impersonality of the progress 
of the world must, when a generally spiritual interpretation 
of its meaning has been arrived at, be corrected by the typical 
religious consciousness of those who are most susceptible to the 
highest spiritual influence, and therefore most dependent upon 
its help. 

Finally, all these considerations tend to relieve doubt as to 
the competence of human powers so far as this is due, not to a 
critical philosophy, but to a kind of moral stupefaction or 
vertigo. So far as such doubt is critical, it has been dealt with 
in our inquiry. So far as it represents a mere sense of over- 
weighted helplessness, it is well to reflect that all human powers 
stand on the same level before the bar of philosophy, which 
impartially examines the claims not only of the highest specu- 
lative thought and of religious consciousness, but even ctf 
ordinary common sense and of scientific explanation. 

After all, knowing is one indispensable activity of per- 
sonal being. Personal being depends upon the comprehensive 
faith of self-affirmation. That act of self-afl&rmation is present 
in all the activities of human consciousness, and prevents any 
one of them from existing in abstraction from the rest. 
Spiritual, moral, and affectional elements are therefore in- 
volved in knowledge itself. The spirit of man, in its fullest 
activity and completest and most harmonious development, 
affirms the world-meaning which is necessary to its own 
existence, satisfaction, and justification. In the practical 
sphere it is forced to overrule mere critical doubts. Alike in 
the lower and in the higher interests of life, it does this by 
an act of faith which is inseparable from, and in reality an 
aspect of, reason. In the fullest measure of self-affirmation 



THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 409 

it includes the affirmation of God. Faith is the victory which 
affirms God in self, and self in God, agaiost the pressure which 
would destroy both, save that it is intended to evoke this 
triumphant faith in opposition to itself. In this sense the 
theistic explanation of the world is the victory of faith ; but with 
that victory are bound up the victory of reason, the justification 
of spiritual consciousness, the rationality of the world, and the 
permanence of those ideals of spiritual worth by which alone is 
progress sought after and made possible. Such a victory, in all 
its many-sided completeness, is impossible without Christ. He 
has revealed the glory of God which unfolds the meaning of the 
world, and has inspired the filial consciousness which responds 
to and manifests it. This twofold gift not only provides the 
only explanation of the universe, but shows how all principles 
of successful thought and action in regard to it are, just in 
proportion to their truthfulness and success, fragments of the 
complete Truth and Life revealed to man in the incarnate 
Son of God. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN AND OF 
REDEMPTION 

CHRISTIANITY contains, as has been seen, the prin- 
ciples which are essential to the explanation of the 
world. In it alone has the full meaning of Theism 
been perfectly manifested. In this respect the only alter- 
native to it is Agnosticism, with its abstract assumptions 
and inherent contradictions, leading eventually to Pessimism 
with its despair. It cannot, of course, be expected that such 
an explanation can, for the present, be scientifically developed 
in detail. The fact that Christian Theism alone contains the 
truths and principles by which the world becomes intelligible 
does not dispense men from the labors of philosophic thought 
or scientific investigation. Until these labors are complete, 
and, further, until the history of the world is fulfilled, there 
will be gaps remaining and mysteries awaiting solution. It 
may, for example, be safely affirmed that spirit has a con- 
stitutive primacy in the world over matter without our being 
able completely to answer the questions. What is matter? 
In what way does spirit act upon it? and, How can it play 
the twofold part of being in one aspect the limit of spirit, 
while in another it is intelligible to spirit? Such questions, 
which represent the ultimate problems of philosophy, are not in 
themselves sufficient to set aside the claim of Christianity to 
furnish by its revelation of God the only possible explanation 
of the universe. 

Yet, this theistic explanation is given, not in theoretic 
form, or with a view to what may be called with strictness 
a cosmic philosophy, but in and through the spiritual life 
of men. It is as God's end is fulfilled in man's spiritual life 

410 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 411 

that the meaning of the world which is organically related to 
man appears. AYhat is theoretic in the Christian revelation is 
the formal expression or description of realities which are prac- 
tically operative in bringing men to realize the ends involved 
in the spiritual constitution of their nature. And while this 
purpose involves revelation, illumination, the activities of faith, 
and other factors, yet the whole is summed up in the Christian 
religion as a work of redemption. The divine end in man 
which reveals alike the nature of God and the meaning of the 
world is attained by way of redemption. It is by this means 
that man attains to the end of his being. Hence it is as 
redemption reaches its spiritual results that the exact character 
of man's need is set forth, and with it the revelation of his 
nature, condition, and destiny. 

It is in the realized relationship of sonship to God, which 
is found in the Christian religion, that human nature, its 
ground and end, stand revealed. The filial consciousness in 
making good the true relationship to God completes human 
nature and stands in organic connection with all the other 
interests and relationships of human life. The verification 
of this spiritual experience is found in the fact that it, and 
it alone, brings that complete fulfillment of life, the promise 
of which lies everj^where in filial assumptions that are 
satisfied in Christian experience. The verification of Chris- 
tianity as doctrine lies in its power to describe and to explain 
this spiritual experience. But here the way is as important 
as the end — the process as the result. Christ is not only 
the Truth and the Life; He is also the Way. The result 
which in bringing satisfaction to man unfolds the meaning 
of the world has been attained by a work of redemption, 
inwardly experienced by man, of which the Christian revela- 
tion furnishes an account. The complete proof of Christianity 
therefore depends upon the living relation of this work to 
the whole of reality, so that it cannot be dismissed as the 
result of a merely subjective imagination, and upon the truth- 
fulness with which its essential features are set forth. Despite 
the fact that the filial consciousness is such a fulfillment of 
human nature that it represents that which is in the highest 
sense normal in man, yet it is clear that this consciousness is 



412 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

not possessed by all men, that it is deliberately renounced by 
some, and that in so far as it is realized it represents the tri- 
umphant issue of a conflict more or less intense and continuous 
with opposing spiritual tendencies. 

Thus, its fulfillment is brought about by a direct activity of 
God, which in respect to its various aspects is described by 
various terms. In respect of its motive it is grace. Its method 
is revelation. As it brings about altered relationships between 
God and man, it is reconciliation. As it achieves a spiritual 
triumph in man, it is apprehended as a manifestation of the 
divine power. On the side of man, the entrance into the filial 
life comes as a deliverance from sin and guilt by the activity 
of faith and the experience of regeneration. The redemptive 
activity of God, which thus results in the salvation of men, is 
brought about in and through Christ by His Incarnation and 
Atonement issuing in the forgiveness of sins and the bestowal 
of His Spirit. 

Hence the Fatherhood of God is manifested in putting away 
the sin of those whom His eternal purpose of love has destined 
to sonship. Again, the filial relation to God constitutes a 
vital ideal in man, which according as it becomes active brings 
into relief the contradiction of sin, and comes into the full 
possession of its rights and power only as men make the re- 
sponse of faith to the grace of God. Of this saving action 
Christ is the Mediator, bringing by His divine-human work in 
life and death the grace of God, our Father, to men, and the 
response of sinful but penitent men to God their Father. 
Whatever difference there may be in the detailed statement of 
this great process, its essential outlines are held as true by 
Christians of all churches and schools. 

Such is the revelation which is contained in the consciousness, 
the activity, and the influence of Jesus Christ the Son of God. 
Such is the experience of God, of Christ, of sin and of salvation, 
which is characteristic of the Christian faith. 

The New Testament doctrine of Eedemption adopts, as 
has been already seen, in their most spiritual form, many 
principles elaborated in the Old Testament. By that adoption 
it stands in vital relationship, not merely to the Old Testa- 
ment, but through the Old Testament to the other religions 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 413 

of the world. Yet, in its total meaning and effect it is absolutely 
unique. 

1. Christianity stands thus distinguished, in the first 
place, by its revelation of divine grace; the nature, energy, and 
manifestation of which are equally unique. The attitude of 
God towards man is one of an unchanging favor which does 
not depend upon the present worth of man himself, but on 
the eternal purpose for his uplifting which determines the 
whole of God's dealing with the race. So supreme is this 
motive that it may be said to subordinate to itself and to its 
supreme purpose all other affections towards mankind which 
are attributed to God. !Por example. His wrath becomes, not 
the angry outburst of a Sovereign against a rebellious subject, 
but the expression of a fatherlj^ concern, which will not 
tolerate that the divine ideal, which is the very life of man, 
should be set aside by him. The intensity of this steadfast 
purpose is therefore not merely marked by the wrath, which 
is stirred by the contradiction of sin, but above all, by the 
merciful succor which makes God Himself to bear and bear 
away the sin which frustrates His purpose and rouses His 
wrath. 

This act of God towards men, made manifest in the 
Incarnation and Sacrifice of Christ, stands by itself. Many 
other religions set forth in various forms the effort of sinful 
man to approach, and to render himself acceptable to, God. 
The New Testament alone sets forth the reconciliation and 
restoration of man, not as the result of a successful human 
effort, but as proceeding from a divine act of self-giving and 
atonement. It may be objected that Indian religion has its 
myths or legends of divine Avatars. Such myths are two- 
fold. Some of them are philosophical, and are concerned with 
the explanation of the world as a manifestation of God. 
They have a measure of affinity with the Logos-doctrine of 
later Hellenic philosophy, if not with its Christian embodi- 
ment in the Gospel of St. John. But what the popular 
religion of Hinduism has affirmed, its stricter religious philos- 
ophy has denied. When the whole universe, including the 
self-consciousness of man, has been resolved into an illusion 
from which it is the function of salvation to deliver man, 



414 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

then the whole conception of the divine nature, as containing a 
principle of self-giving and self-manifestation, is destroyed. 

Under other influences some of the countless Avatars of the 
divine, that of Vishnu, for example, represent the incarnation 
of the principles of compassion and service at work for the 
deliverance of man from particular evils or from his misery 
as a whole. Yet such supposed manifestations, deeply important 
as they are for the general philosophy of religion, and even of 
Christianity, are — so far as Indian religion is concerned — im- 
perfectly grounded in the divine nature, and not made the one 
key to the character and purpose of God. They are neither 
comprehensive in setting forth the attitude of God towards the 
world, nor universal in the scope of their compassion, nor con- 
sistent with other Avatars of a totally different kind. Thus, 
while there are elements here and in the myths of other re- 
ligions which represent the gracious activity of this or that 
finite divinity, yet these do but serve to bring into higher relief 
the transcendence of the Christian doctrine of divine grace, 
while showing the close relationship in which it stands to those 
nobler conceptions of general religion, which apart from Christ 
remain incomplete, and hold but a precarious tenure of the 
human heart and mind. 

2. Again, the redemptive act of the Christian religion is 
throughout a divine-human fulfillment. The grace of God is 
not external and merely miraculous in its action; nor is the 
saving deed of Christ a successful intervention on man's behalf 
from outside, any more than it is a discovery by man of the way 
to placate God. The manifestation of divine grace is made in 
and through a perfect human life, and that life rests upon and 
expresses the divine act of which it is the manifestation and 
result. It is all divine and all human ; all supernatural and all 
natural. It is the act of God, yet the activity of man. Christ 
thus conceived as Eedeemer brings the highest evidence of divine 
Fatherhood in its relation to a world which, while it springs from 
God, is afflicted with the mysterious and deadly evil of sin. 
The Incarnation, which manifests the grace of God, and is the 
indispensable means of atonement and redemption, witnesses 
to the fudamental unity, and not the separateness, of God 
and man. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 415 

3. Hence, further, while salvation is, according to the Chris- 
tian religion, a divine operation, it is also a vital spiritual 
process. Its deliverance is not external, but is wrought out 
because an inner experience of reconciliation brings men to 
enjoy a spiritual relationship to God, which sets human nature 
on the way to the blessedness of a complete spiritual 
consummation. 

The view taken throughout these pages has been, not that 
the Christian religion, even as the religion of redemption, is 
a bare contradiction of other religions, but that it represents 
the complete realization of the idea and end of religion, 
partially and in different aspects, suggested elsewhere. This 
is manifestly the case, so far as the doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion is concerned. It is equally so in respect of its doctrine 
of atoning sacrifice. It is impossible and needless to deal in 
detail here with the history and practice of sacrifice in religion, 
its different forms, or with the principles which lie at the 
root of it. In different ways, and in different degrees of em» 
phasis, the various practices of sacrifice include the recognition 
by man of a divine claim, and the fulfillment of its demand. 
They contain the recognition of divine fellowship and its 
attainment by means of the sacrificial offering and feast. 
They frequently involve the propitiation of a divinity angry 
with the worshiper, either on account of some particular 
transgression, or because of the general worthlessness of his 
life. And, finally, they represent religion as realized only 
at a personal cost paid through the sacrifice or offering, and 
also the principle of representative substitution of the victim 
for its offerer. 

Such are the general conceptions manifest here and there in 
all sacrificial practices, without taking account of those baser 
conceptions of the divine being which look upon him as so 
vengeful or envious, that he must constantly be satisfied or 
bribed with a share of the good fortune which comes to his 
iworshiper. 

All the higher and more general conceptions are found 
IQ the Old Testament, and are presented to us in the most 
spiritual and humanized form in Isaiah liii., where the 
atoning sacrifice is made through the passion of a prophet 



416 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

whose suffering is entailed upon him by his fidelity to the calling 
and truth of God. Yet while Isaiah liii. supplies the material 
for the New Testament doctrine of the Atonement, it is not 
always perceived how far it falls short of its N'ew Testament 
fulfillment. The vicarious suffering which falls upon the 
prophet is an infliction by God. The prophet, so far as his 
passion is concerned, is seen to be separate from God, as is 
the case with ordinary men. Hence, while there is a penal 
infliction upon him, there is no divine self-giving in that in- 
fliction. The victim is neither given by God nor one with Him. 
Thus the chastisement, as it is conceived, falls outside the 
divine nature, and can in no sense be said to be borne by 
God Himself. 

The New Testament doctrine of sacrifice, on the other hand, 
represents the victim as standing in such relation to God that 
the very gift of the victim is a mark of the divine reconcilia- 
tion in principle, that the fulfillment of the sacrifice is an 
offering by God Himself, and that the atoning suffering, while 
completely human in its incidence, is a suffering borne by God 
Himself in the Person of His Son. All this, which so fulfills 
the idea of sacrifice as to transform it, is not even suggested 
in Isaiah liii. 

The general principles contained in the practice of sacri- 
fice are by their very prevalence shown to be deeply rooted 
in human nature itself. Hence, they cannot be dismissed as 
being untrue simply because they are human and imperfect. 
Eather, those who believe that human faculties and needs 
contain within themselves a true, even if imperfect, witness 
to reality, will study what is involved in order to appreciate 
its essential meaning, and to find the place of that meaning 
in the whole world of truth. Points of contact between 
all these doctrines and practices on the one hand, and 
Christianity on the other, should be explored; yet, on the 
principle that religion can only be examined and judged in 
its highest and perfect form, the doctrine of Atonement 
can only be satisfactorily examined in its unique Christian 
embodiment. 

The following salient features of the Christian doctrine of 
redemption are to be observed in general : — 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 417 

(1) Christianity never by its view of man's need of redemp- 
tion throws humanity out of God. The advent and work of 
Christ are the fulfillment of a long course of spiritual prepara- 
tion. That preparation is as much the unfolding of capacity 
as the development of a sense of need. The spirit which 
characterizes alike the religion and theology of the Old Testa- 
ment, and above all, the teaching and spirit of Christ, is as far 
removed as possible from the unnatural abstractions in which 
formal theologians have frequently delighted, and from the 
morbid sentiments w^hich have often disfigured an imperfect 
Christian piety. The history of mankind appears as the provi- 
dential training of God for the consummation of "the fullness 
of the times." It is true that the immediate object and the 
means of this training is found in the Old Testament in the 
peculiar people of God, and in the New in the community of 
those who are quickened by the Spirit of Christ. The illumina- 
tion enjoyed by these undoubtedly leaves in deep shadow those 
who do not possess it. Yet the opposition is not made absolute. 
If the distinction is real, it is, nevertheless, transcended by 
points of contact to be found alike in the universal purpose of 
divine grace, and in the spiritual constitution and capacity of 
human nature itself. 

Thus the hold of God upon the human race is never treated 
as having been set aside by sin. The conception of redemp- 
tion is relieved from this exaggeration, because though its 
operation culminates in the manifestation of Jesus Christ, its 
processes are coeval with the existence of mankind; nay, are 
traced back to the eternal purpose of God, and explained as the 
unceasing outcome of His essential love. Further, redemption 
involves a revelation, the very possibility of which assumes the 
presence of an undestroyed spiritual faculty in man. And the 
end of redemption is found in a consummation, the mark of 
which is the satisfaction of a spiritual capacity without which 
the gospel could gain no response from the heart of man. 
Sin, therefore, however universal its existence, and how- 
ever grave its nature and consequences, is not allowed to 
obscure these underlying and positive relations between God and 
man, nor to suspend for a moment His gracious manifestation 
in history. 



418 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

(2) Secondly, the union of the divine and the human 
which has been noted as characteristic of redemption marks it 
in every part and every stage. The Incarnation, for example, 
can only be properly apprehended as being equally, at once, 
and throughout the complete manifestation of God and the 
attainment of the spiritual ideal by man. It is each of these 
two because it is the other. Abstract theology has often set 
up the divine and the human as in antithetic relation. It has 
been afraid to admit the complete reality of the human lest it 
should eclipse the divine, or, on the other hand, has supposed 
that the frankly historic treatment of Jesus superseded the 
doctrine of His divinity. No such antithesis appears in the 
New Testament. The familiarity of the disciples with 
the Son of Man does not for a moment prevent them from 
investing Him with the unique attributes of the Son of 
God, nor, on the other hand, does the doctrine of His 
divinity as it is presented to us in the Fourth Gospel lead 
the author for a moment to refrain from bringing into the 
highest relief convincing marks of His humanity. The 
abstract doctrine of the separateness and even the intrinsic 
opposition between the divine nature and the human is over- 
come by a personal contact with Jesus which has revealed what 
in a true sense may be called the humanity of God and the 
divinity of man. 

The same union is manifest in the doctrine of the Atonement. 
The death of Christ is at once the bearing of sin by God, and 
the offering of man to God. It may be construed alternatively 
from either side, but it is throughout and indivisibly both the 
one and the other. 

So, also, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in redemption may 
be exhibited equally as the gift of a Divine Power and as the 
attainment of self-realization by man. And this because of the 
original relationship between the Spirit of God and the 
spirit of man. 

(3) Hence, thirdly, the Christian doctrine of redemption 
contemplates a complete interpenetration of man by God; and 
in such wise that spiritual influence has its natural result 
in ethical transformation. The influence of God does not 
overbear human nature or invade it, dividing it in twain. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 419 

The result and the manifestation of the spiritual is the 
ethical. 

(4) In conformity with these underlying principles the re- 
demptive facts themselves, unique though they are, find their 
place in a rational spiritual development. The transcen- 
dence of Christ and the unique events which marked His 
history are not incompatible with His appearance at what 
St. Paul calls "the fullness of the tunes.^' If His appearance 
marks the sovereign power of God, it reveals equally His 
sovereign wisdom. 

(5) And lastly, even the consciousness of sin is developed 
within and by means of this great spiritual process. If Christ 
came to save men from their sin, it remains true that they only 
know their sin in any completeness in and by their knowledge 
of Christ, who redeems them from it. The knowledge of sin in 
its entirety is part of the work of redemption, and proceeds side 
by side with it. 

AU these considerations are necessary if we are to es- 
cape from an artificial presentment of the doctrine of 
redemption which, while it often facilitates human analogies, 
departs alike from the teaching of the New Testament and 
from the essential features of spiritual experience, to say 
nothing of the difficulties which it needlessly presents 
to reason. 

The doctrine of redemption, however, assumes and sets 
forth three fundamental facts: — (1) That man is possessed of 
spiritual freedom. (2) That mankind is involved in sin. 
(3) That his redemption is due to a transcending dealing with 
him by God. Further, the fact that this dealing transcends 
nature as ordinarily understood leads many to suppose that it 
involves an external and accidental remedy for sin, and that 
the salvation which it brings is equally accidental in the sense 
that it stands in no organic connection with the constitution 
of human nature itself. Alike its heaven and its hell are held 
to be unverifiable, external, and excessive so far as their 
conception is concerned. They can be explained, it is held, 
as the product of human superstition. And this whether 
individual immortality, a perfected spiritual community based 
upon immortality, or a reconstituted world as its result, is 



420 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

considered. Lastly, the difficulty is found that redemption is a 
gradual and partial process instead of an actual and immediate 
bestowment upon mankind. 

On all these points it is held that the doctrine of redemp- 
tion, quite apart from any particular objections, stands con- 
demned by the principles of modern thought. To spiritual 
freedom the universal reign of natural law is opposed; to the 
doctrine of sin and of the spiritual ruin of the race the doctrine 
of evolution. A transcendent dealing of God with man is 
held to be inconsistent with the cosmic processes of His govern- 
ment. And lastly, the doctrines of grace and of vicarious 
atonement are held to be incompatible with an ethical view 
of life. 

It is necessary to offer some general considerations as to each 
of these objections. 

I. The primary condition of the Christian doctrine of 
man and of redemption is that man is a free moral personality. 
What is involved in his freedom will become clearer when the 
objections raised against it have been considered. Mean- 
while it is implied that men are in such wise the creators of 
their own character and conduct that they are justly open to 
praise or blame on account of it. The freedom of the will 
properly understood is essential to the fact of moral responsi- 
bility. In meting out praise and reward on account of good 
conduct, blame and punishment on account of evil, considera- 
tions of justice are as essential as those of utility to society. 
The assumption upon which society has proceeded from first 
to last is not merely that its sanctions are convenient, but that 
they are righteous. By such sanctions undoubtedly new 
motives are supplied to the will, and these motives may have 
great deterrent value. But the principle upon which men 
award approval or disapproval and their consequences is 
that the actions which are thus visited were governed by no 
external necessity, but resulted from the responsible choice of 
the agent. 

So far as external necessity is concerned all are agreed, if 
by external necessity is meant the exercise of irresistible force. 
Yet the sharp distinction between external and internal 
necessity has been done away by the modern point of view. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 421 

The operation of necessity is no longer conceived as exercised 
purely from without in the sense of its being independent of 
the organism of the individual. Hence, three objections may 
be urged against the doctrine of moral freedom. In the first 
place, from the point of view of physical science it may be 
urged that man is governed by physical necessity. In 
the second place, from the psychological standpoint it may be 
contended that his action is always the resultant of the 
various pressures of motives operating upon his will. And, in 
the third place, it may be objected from the theological stand- 
point that his moral freedom is incompatible with the sovereignty 
of God. 

The doctrine of moral freedom must therefore be examined 
in the light of all these objections. Speaking generally, the 
only satisfactory starting-point must be from the investigation 
of self-consciousness itself. Any theories which begin by pro- 
nouncing the characteristic deliverances of self-consciousness 
to be illusory, or the general development of self-consciousness 
to be erroneous, put themselves at once out of court. What- 
ever truth we can either know or imagine is presented to us 
in and through our self-consciousness. We can never escape 
from self-consciousness in order to take a dispassionate view 
of truth from outside ourselves. It is impossible for us to 
possess any standard of truth, or any body of truths, which 
are thus derived . from outside ourselves. Self -consciousness 
can only be corrected by self-consciousness; by the appeal, 
that is to say, from superficial appearances presented to it to 
that which underlies them, and is the means of gathering up 
apparently discordant phenomena into a consistent whole. In 
perception and the acquisition of knowledge generally the 
self is given in distinction from and in union with the world 
which it perceives and knows. But the world is perceived 
and known by man as an active and not merely as an 
intelligent being. As an active being man pursues ends, and 
has the consciousness that, within certain limits, the choice of 
ends is subject to his own control. So far as he is free irom 
constraint of his fellows he selects his ends because he either 
desires or approves them. He acts in a particular way 
because he wills to do so. The decision of his will may be 



422 THE CHRISTIAN" RELIGION 

arrived at with difficulty, may be steadfast or fluctuating, im- 
pulsive or deliberate. But whichever it may be, he has the 
consciousness that the result is something within his own power. 
This is the indispensable form of volitional consciousness. The 
vacillations through which the decision of the will is arrived at 
must indeed be accounted for in our doctrine of the freedom of 
the will; but however they may be accounted for they are insuffi- 
cient to set aside the primary deliverance which is included 
within the exercise of will itself. 

And, still more, the exercise of the will is attended by self- 
approval or by self-disapproval. The standards upon which its 
verdicts are based are influenced from many sources. The state 
of the law, public opinion, the training of the home, religious 
influence — all have their bearing upon the moral consciousness 
of the individual. Yet, in so far as he becomes a moral being at 
all, the influence which all these exercise upon him is not that 
of external constraint, but goes to shape a moral ideal which is 
internally set up within the moral consciousness itself as the 
standard by which conduct is judged, and to which even motives 
should conform. 

Thus the ideal, however formed, is, according to the con- 
sciousness of the individual, freely adopted and made the in- 
strument of responsible choice. It is by this internal ideal thus 
appropriated that man praises or blames himself so far as he 
passes moral judgment upon his own conduct. In so far as he 
offends against standards which have not thus become part 
of his own internal freedom, and suffers for the offence, he 
may blame himself for unwisdom; but he does not con- 
demn himself for moral wrong. The internality of the 
standard is essential to its moral character. And directly it 
becomes internal it becomes the instrument of moral freedom. 
The first requisite, therefore, is to allow this fact of moral con- 
sciousness to speak for itself. The indispensable condition of 
any adequate doctrine of the will is accurate and complete de- 
scription of the phenomena presented to consciousness in its 
decisions. Here, above all, care must be taken that we should 
not explain it by explaining it away. 

1. If this attitude be maintained it will be manifest that 
the judgment of consciousness is that while man is conditioned 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 423 

by the material, he is not subject to its necessity. Whatever 
may be the truth of the alleged complete parallelism between 
nervous states on the one hand and conscious states on the other, 
man has no complete consciousness of, or even power to observe, 
his nervous states. That which alone is made manifest to him 
is a series of states of consciousness relative to self as being his 
own, and apparently modified from time to time by the direct 
volition of the self to which they are relative. It is conceivable 
that the physical side of all this may be explored, and that even 
the most direct and decisive volition may have an inseparable 
union with a particular nervous condition, whether as cause, 
concomitant, or effect. Yet, such a condition will to the end be 
a matter presented to the researches of physical science, while 
immediate consciousness will proceed as though no such physical 
correspondence existed. 

Unquestionably it is in some sense through the mediation 
of the nervous system that the material world is presented to 
consciousness, whether as a percept or as a force operating 
upon the feeling and influencing the will. It is equally 
clear that the mediation of the body is not merely external, that 
it is in some sense at present impossible to explain more than a 
mere connecting link between the spiritual and the material. 
The opposition between mind and matter must indeed be tran- 
scended before any connecting link can be found between them. 
If the nervous system be the indispensable means by which an 
external world is perceived and acted upon by the subject, it 
must be because a more intimate connection exists between the 
two sides of the relation than scientific inquiry can either explore 
or imagine. 

Speaking generally, it is clear that the external world 
conditions moral freedom by presenting the data upon which 
freedom is exercised. The nature of the material objects and 
laws by which human life is environed, the society of men 
whose presence and influence is only revealed to us through 
the senses, present to us the particular realities which, by 
forming the world of consciousness, condition the tasks and 
problems of the will. And, further, the pleasurable or painful 
sensations by which particular experiences are accompanied 
appear to be dependent upon the nature and condition of the 



424 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

physical organism. The external conditions are the cause of 
subjective feelings, while the decisions of the will are obviously 
succeeded by states of feeling which reveal the heightened or 
depressed vitality of the bodily organism. Again, the material 
world imposes its conditions upon our very reaction upon it 
by means of our activity. However sovereign may be the 
decisions of our will, its effect is in various ways limited by 
our physical energy. Moreover, our physical energy must 
manifest itself in accordance with and by means of the 
mechanical and other laws which prevail in the physical 
world. 

Yet, when all this has been said, the fact remains that we 
have throughout an immediate consciousness of the autonomy 
of the will, and that the whole of our moral, social, and 
judicial standards are a witness to that autonomy. Within 
the realm of consciousness, nothing is more familiar than our 
power, if we will, to override the promptings of our merely 
physical nature. The state of "giving way" to these is as 
clearly recognized by us as is the corresponding state of over- 
coming them. Moreover, between these two extremes, we 
have frequent experience of being able, by a direct act of will, 
to moderate them. To secure a sufficient end, we may either 
modify to a large extent the physical influences which 
threaten to overmaster us, or we may produce a similar 
result from the other side by calling in to the assistance of 
our will a large number of balancing considerations which 
eventually counteract our physical conditions. Thus, the 
man who is sunk in depression may arrest the progress of 
what unfits him for the moral tasks of life, either by so 
changing his environment as to select and bring to bear upon 
himself new and inspiring influences from without, or still 
more he may elect to call forth within himself considerations 
which dissipate his gloom, and by an act of the will may 
constitute these considerations fixed ideas, until, by their 
means, the physical and mental stress has passed away. 
Throughout this process, whether he yield, overcome, or 
moderate, he is conscious of moral responsibility for his 
choice, and of his duty and power, not merely to be the 
receiving-house of manifold physical impressions, but to order 



MAN" AND REDEMPTION 425 

and modify them for the fulfillment of the supreme ends 
of his life. 

Suppose, then, that it were possible to establish the com- 
plete parallelism between nervous and mental states, and that 
we could have a direct and complete power of observing that 
parallelism, then one or other of two conclusions would be 
drawn. Either the nervous states would appear to be the 
material presentation of the spiritual, its physical embodiment; 
or a relation of cause and effect might be held to exist between 
the one and the other. If the former alternative were selected, 
this would not provide even a faint suggestion that the primary 
consciousness of volitional power and responsibility should be 
denied. The testimony of self-consciousness would be left 
in complete possession of the field, even although the 
decisions of the will were, so to speak, ensphered in physical 
conditions. 

Supposing, however, that the other alternative be taken, 
and that it be assumed that either the nervous conditions are 
the cause of spiritual consciousness, or that spiritual con- 
sciousness is the cause of the nervous conditions. It is 
needless to discuss at the present moment the psychological 
question. Yet upon the facts disclosed in consciousness, if 
interaction is admitted between the nervous and the conscious 
states, the primary consciousness of man that he is able, by a 
direct decision of the will, to invade the physical conditions, 
cannot be set aside. No possible perfection of our observation 
of the successive states of nervous consciousness would entitle 
us to convert that into the cause which is equally capable, 
a priori, of being treated as the effect. The question, then, 
which is cause and which is effect, must be decided not by 
any consideration of the completeness and orderly succession 
of the physical series, but by general metaphysical principles 
which cannot be settled by mere reference to physical facts. 
The working out of the complete connection between the 
physical and the mental would no more entitle us to dismiss 
our consciousness of effective will-power as a mere chimera 
than it would entitle us to deny the importance of the mind 
and its laws in constituting the perceptive experience of man- 
kind. The concomitance would be in itself equally compatible 



426 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

with the view that the material phenomena constitute the in- 
strument of consciousness as with the view that they are the 
creator of consciousness. In that state of divided possibility, 
the decisive judgment would be given by the testimony of the 
moral consciousness by which alone can the life of man be 
made good. 

This, however, would not be to disparage the importance 
under our present conditions of existence of the material 
instruments of consciousness. The will, in its freest exercise, 
cannot be conceived to be external (if such a word be in place) 
to the physical organism. It is in command of the reservoir 
of energy which it uses. The occasion for its use of that energy 
is in part created according to the hypothesis by the antecedent 
physical conditions. Whether the decision takes this form or 
that, therefore, it would appear to the scientific investigator to 
take its place in the regular physical series. Apart from 
knowledge of the subjective side, it would appear to be com- 
pletely explained by physical antecedents. Yet that which on 
its physical side appears and is purely natural, not affecting 
therefore the laws of physical energy in any respect, will be 
found on the subjective side to be explained by the free 
intervention of the will. 

2. Man is influenced by motives, but the self-realizing 
potentiality of spiritual and moral personality is present 
throughout. The analogy of mechanical forces has fre- 
quently been applied to the motives of the will. Diverse 
motives have been compared to the different forces which meet 
at one center, and it is supposed that the result in action is 
determined by the resultant pressure of these various motives. 
In short, it is urged that the so-called parallelogram of forces 
is as applicable to the facts of moral life as it is to machinery. 
It may be admitted that man never acts except under certain 
influences. Indeed, an uninfluenced man cannot exist. Not 
for one moment can we escape from the environment which 
acts upon us through our senses, and which stimulates the 
inner life to appropriate and respond to it. It does not, 
however, follow that activity succeeds influence. Still less 
that it succeeds after an interval of time, however infini- 
tesimal. Man is from the first as active as he is receptive. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 427 

The two are coextensive throughout his life. His action 
therefore depends upon an individuality, in which openness 
to certain impressions and a peculiar activity by which he at 
once acts and reacts upon them are combined. That in- 
dividuality is influenced by all the forces of heredity. In 
this way, each individual assumes the history of the race as 
operative upon him through his progenitors. Thus, the self 
constituted by each man's individuality cannot be separated 
either from the inheritance of the past or from the environ- 
ment of the present. The appetites, instincts, impulses, desires, 
intuitions which affect him are all modified by these two 
limiting conditions. Moral freedom is not in abstracto or 
absolutely creative; it can only exercise itself upon the data 
which are thus inwardly presented to it. There is no question, 
therefore, as is sometimes alleged by Determinists, of a 
mere miracle in the sense that anything may happen through 
free choice apart from all the antecedents which led up 
to its exercise. 

Two other admissions should be made. In the first place, 
there is much human action in which the exercise of moral 
freedom is suppressed. Wide ranges of action tend to become 
automatic; either moral decisions have never been taken in 
regard to them, or the principles by which action is guided 
have been settled long since, and the consequential course of 
conduct tends to become part of the unconsidered mechanism 
of life. Such must be the case if man is to have the energy 
and leisure to respond to the new calls of a progressive life. 
Thus, both the imperfect and the perfect moralization of life 
in different ways tend to remove whole tracts of conduct 
from the critical exercise of moral freedom. Secondly, the 
parallelogram of forces may fairly serve as an analogy in the 
case of impulsive or impassioned action. There are those 
who are largely the servants of impulse; this is prevailingly 
the case in childhood. There are others who give way 
from time to time to outbursts of passion and appetite. In the 
former, self-command has never been attained. In the latter 
it may have been lost. In a sense, it would be true to say 
that both the one and the other are explained by the fact 
that selfhood is as yet incomplete. When a man surrenders 



428 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGIOX 

himself to impulse, he sinks below the distinctive level of 
manhood towards that which is merely animal. In propor- 
tion as selfhood becomes perfectly developed, he criticizes his 
impulses and desires, discriminates between them, and controls 
them. Much of the highest and noblest action which he 
performs is under stress of the severest conflict with natural 
impulses. If it be said that the very fact that he resists 
them shows that there is a greater volume of pressure against 
them than in them, this is merely to beg the question. So 
far as intensity of emotional effect is concerned, it is simply 
untrue to say that the resultant action is more powerful than 
that which it overrides. That it prevails over the will is 
true, but its prevalence is due to considerations of reason and 
not to the pressure of mere force. In short, when selfhood is 
developed, man judges his impulses, emotions, and desires by 
a permanent standard of values, set up and enforced by his 
personality. That standard of values is less and less de- 
termined by mere emotional intensity, although, undoubtedly, 
it brings with it a satisfaction of its own. Thus the more 
thoughtful of those who have contended that the decisions of 
the will are determined by the resultant of the pleasures and 
pains produced by any course of action in prospect, have intro- 
duced, as in the case of J. S. Mill, distinctions between kinds of 
pleasures, which, when closely examined, seem to set aside the 
whole hypothesis that conduct is determined by the mere pres- 
sure of pleasure and pain and of the desires connected with 
them upon the will. In the case of a higher and more delicate 
pleasure, such for example as the sense of having done one's 
duty, either the weakness of a motive considered as a force has 
been counterbalanced by a sense of worth which brings it into 
a more influential relation to the personality, or the personality 
itself has operated to select between one kind of pleasure and 
another. 

The force of this consideration is increased when it is 
borne in mind that pleasures and pains chiefly act upon the 
will as motives by anticipation. It is true that we often take 
action or refuse to take action in order to prolong pleasurable 
sensations or emotions. It is equally true that pain already 
experienced prompts to decisive action of a simple kind, or 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 429 

even of one involving elaborate contrivance in order to escape 
from it. A case of the former is when a child withdraws his 
hand from the fire; of the latter when an adult has recourse 
to various kinds of treatment to overcome a disease. Yet 
such instances, where pleasure or pain already experienced 
operate upon the will, belong to the lower ranges of voluntary 
action. The higher forms of action depend upon delib- 
erate choice in order to gain an end conceived by the 
imagination. 

In all such cases the question arises, What is it that acts 
upon the will? Is it the attainment of the end that is set 
before us, or is it the enjoyment of some pleasure or the 
avoidance of some pain which the attainment of that end is 
expected to bring with it? It would seem as though a decision 
either way involves an undue abstraction. It is impossible to 
contemplate the realization of an end without some conception 
of pleasurable consequences accompanying it; especially that 
sense of satisfaction which attends the attainment of a purpose 
or the supply of a need. On the other hand, it is clear that 
in action the direct object of the mind is not an emotional 
anticipation of pleasure, but the attainment of a deliberately 
chosen end. Por the agent to transport himself by an artificial 
effort of imagination into the pleasurable emotions which he 
anticipates, unfits him for the efforts which he is called upon 
to make, and would frequently act rather as a deterrent than 
as an incentive by destroying his illusions before the time. 
This latter effect would take place because the presence of 
emotional pleasure after a time evokes the criticism of the 
reason. And especially as the emotion loses its freshness and 
begins to weary with a sense of monotony. Hence the attempt 
to seize by anticipation upon the emotional concomitants of 
the attainment of an end would certainly tend to destroy 
whatever power there is in them to awaken the activity. An 
end sought means a need satisfied. A need satisfied carries 
with it a pleasurably heightened consciousness. All these 
elements cohere in the motive which presents itself to the 
will. But all these elements are colored throughout by the 
individuality of the actor. The need he feels, the peculiar 
way in which he contemplates its satisfaction, creating in 



430 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

imagination an anticipated pleasure, which may or may not be 
eventually enjoyed, no less than the peculiar means by which he 
satisfies his need — all these, even in a simple act of choice, bear 
the stamp of his own individuality. 

But the case is rarely simple. Various needs present 
themselves ; the satisfaction of some of them being incompatible 
with that of the rest. Different ideals present themselves, 
and the selective process takes place. The anticipated pleasure 
or relief from pain which is projected into the future attain- 
ment, while undoubtedly suggested in part by the experience 
of the past, is largely created by the sense of the value of the 
end proposed to the governing purposes of life. To forecast 
action is for the most part to rise superior to merely emotional 
inducements. The man in whom such inducements habitually 
prevail manifestly falls below the realization of any steadfast 
moral personality. On the other hand, the man who attains to 
such personality is the man who is able to resist the pressure of 
the emotional anticipation, and to select among competing pos- 
sibilities of action such courses as are consistent with his 
previous lines of action. And he is not content with outward 
consistency. He selects anew and reaffirms the motives by 
which these lines of action were determined, in spite of all 
incitements to the contrary. The governing factor in his 
choice, therefore, is his will to select that which maintains the 
consistency of his life, which develops and secures the expression 
of his personality by upholding the moral standard of values 
which he has set up. 

Hence in all such complicated acts of choice the man 
who acquires moral personality brings to bear a norm by 
which he criticizes and selects the motives which are to govern 
his character. The standard which he preserves presents itself 
to him as an ideal to be fulfilled in the ever new unfolding 
of his life. At every point there is a possibility of his de- 
parting from it by impulse, or by the invasion of emotion, or 
by mistaken judgment. Yet if such a consequence take place 
under pressure of anticipated pleasure or pain, although he 
may have obeyed the strongest motive dynamically considered, 
he has so far missed the mark. And this not merely so far as 
the general human ideal is concerned. He has not merely 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 431 

diverged from the path by which alone can the general well- 
being of the human race be secured. He has not merely become 
an exception to the general law or tendency of human averages, 
but he has been inconsistent with his own individual ideal. In 
following the strongest, that is to say the prevailing motive, he 
has so far ceased to be a moral personality. He has admitted a 
course of action which cannot be made consistent with those 
ends of life which have been selected by him as maintaining and 
satisfying the highest values of life. 

Hence to represent man as helplessly subject to the pressure 
brought to bear upon him, seems a total misconception of all 
moral decision. 

The view which we have set aside has commonly been 
selected on the ground that human actions, both in general 
and in particular, can be predicted with a high degree of 
certainty, and that only by this means can a science of human 
conduct be set up. Neither of these contentions in any way 
bears out the doctrine of Determinism. That a man^s action 
can be predicted may be as much due to his hitherto unfailing 
exercise of moral discrimination in order to secure a permanent 
ideal of life as to any consideration of the emotional effect of 
motives upon him. N'or is this latter view necessary in order 
to a scientific knowledge of human conduct. This is to be 
obtained by the study of what is involved in the ends which 
approve themselves to the moral sense of men as fulfilling the 
end of their being, by investigating the nature and grounds of 
divergency as to such standards, and by discovering the causes 
by which their higher standards of action are from time to time 
modified or set aside. 

The greatest alternative presented to the human will is 
that which is involved in religious choice. It is in regard to 
man's dealings with God that the greatest crisis takes place.' 
He is related to God and to the universe in God. The meaning 
of that relationship is unfolded within his consciousness by 
the sense of dependence, the needs of spiritual aspiration, the 
dictates of conscience; in a word, by that combination of love 
and reason through which man realizes his place in the 
universal order of being. On the other hand, man is a 
distinct individual, possessing his own individual instincts, 



432 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGI02Sr 

impulses, and desires. The alternative so presented must be 
more carefully examined in dealing with the nature of sin. 
Meanwhile it is sufficient to say that the most far-reaching 
act of freedom is the decision either to emphasize and give 
effect to the relations which make man's individuality the free 
servant of the universal, or which turn that individuality into 
a means and justification of ignoring such claims in order to 
the pursuit of what appears to promote his own particular 
advantage. 

The matter upon which his choice is in this respect exercised 
differs widely in the mode and content of its immediate pres- 
entation to him. It ranges, according to circumstances, from 
any ordinar}^ contrast between altruism and selfishness, in re- 
gard to particular actions, up to the clearly recognized choice 
between God and the world presented to a Christian Theist. 
Yet the full content of the choice of the Divine embraces all 
these particular acts of choice throughout the whole realm of 
human life. Every decision for the higher as against the lower 
is in its inmost nature religious, and would be seen, if its 
whole meaning were understood, to be the choice of God, by 
giving effect to those higher spiritual and moral intuitions 
which reveal and respond to the relation of God to men, and 
are indeed the immanent manifestation of His Spirit. The 
ultimate significance of the act is therefore the same, however 
great may be the difference in the apprehension of its full 
meaning and of its spiritual significance. The alternative 
may be presented in the spiritual crisis known to religious 
men as that of conversion, or in the daily recurring issues 
presented to the will from the dawn of moral responsibility. 
The former must needs determine the latter. The latter, 
if they be steadfastly persisted in, imply and lead up to the 
former. Thus the phenomena of spiritual decision known to 
the Christian religion are not isolated, but represent with the 
fullest determination of content and the highest intensity of 
spirit the alternative which is presented throughout the whole 
of human life, and which in substance is experienced either as 
one all-determining act of choice or intermittently in regard 
to particular decisions by all human beings whose life attains 
to moralization. In no acts of will are the fact and nature of 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 433 

moral freedom more clearly disclosed than in these, in which the 
selection is felt to be between right and wrong, the higher and 
the lower, the social and the anti-social. 

3. Lastly, the sovereignty of God is such as is compatible 
with moral personality, as it has now been described. Obviously, 
moral personality in man is both the basis and the outcome 
of a relationship to God which transcends the natural as or- 
dinarily understood. Moreover, it is from this consciousness 
of personality in all its implications, religious, moral, and 
rational, that the conception of God as perfect Personality 
arises. The personality of God can only be made known to and 
in human personality. In the nature of this religious conscious- 
ness of divine personality are combined the sense of union, of 
distinction, and of a divine sovereignty, which acting on the 
basis of union and maintaining distinction, gains its ends b}^ 
spiritual and moral means. 

While, however, the mode of divine relation and influence 
in regard to finite personalities can only become manifest when 
such personalities make their appearance in the universe, yet 
the foundation has been laid long before moral personality ap- 
pears. The relations of God to man, considered as those of the 
perfect and supreme spiritual personality to the finite, are the 
highest and the most complex fulfillment of a promise which is 
made throughout the lower creation. God's relation to the 
natural universe is not the annulling but the maintenance of 
distinction. It involves the attaining of a divine purpose by the 
setting up of the so-called material with a measure of inde- 
pendence, with steadfast properties, and established order, which, 
if on the one hand they are the means by which nature serves 
God, are on the other hand the divinely given protection against 
any arbitrary interference. 

The general form of relationship, therefore, which gives 
promise of ultimate moral freedom is found within the constitu- 
tion of nature itself. Its fullness and range varies directly as the 
complexity of the organism. Living forms in this respect are 
the connecting-link between the domain of physics on the one 
hand, and of moral freedom on the other. 

Again, looking at the matter from the other side, the 
possession of moral freedom does not throw man into a merely 



434 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

external relationship to God any more than to nature. The 
spatial conceptions of within and without, however natural 
and necessary, are apt to become misleading. It is equally 
true to say that moral freedom, like man himself, is within 
nature, as to say that it is without. The fact that man 
operates upon nature does not exclude him from nature; 
indeed, he must be a part of nature in order that he may 
operate upon it. In the same way humanity is only possible 
because God is the ground, the means, the law, and the end 
of man's being, alike in its individual and in its social aspects. 
Yet, as personal, God and man, despite this inmost unity, are 
brought face to face with one another. But the fact that 
human nature is grounded and constituted in God makes 
every faculty of man an avenue to God. Not, however, a 
bridge across a chasm. Every human faculty is immanent in 
God, and God is immanent in it. Spiritual and ideal aspira- 
tion, reason, conscience, faith, are equally the testimony to God's 
indwelling in man, and to man's indwelling in God. If in one 
respect they bear witness to the distinction between the two, 
they equally bear witness on the other to the union out of 
which the distinction springs, and by which it is ultimately 
reconciled. 

Hence the divine is not introduced into human nature at one 
particular point, either of time, of facult}^ or of experience. 
The human and the divine in man are in essence coextensive ; the 
divine being the source and explanation of the possibility, order, 
and meaning of the human. 

It may be that investigation of what is called subliminal 
consciousness may eventually throw much light upon the 
means of this relationship. Subliminal consciousness may be 
regarded as the secret repository of the past, whether that past 
be within the limits of the individual life or extends to his 
ancestral inheritance. It reveals from time to time that it is 
the storehouse of potentialities not yet developed, or, it may 
be, superseded by subsequent conscious selection. It represents 
a whole of personality, only an infinitesimal part of which is 
revealed at any moment of consciousness, or, perhaps, at all" 
moments of consciousness added together. Is it not here that 
we should find, if we could explore it, the point of contact, if 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 43S 

Buch an inadequate phrase be allowed, between God and man, 
the seat of the divine sovereignty and influence over human 
life? 

However this may be, the difBculty raised by the concep- 
tion of consciousness of a personal relationship between God 
and man, considered in their distinction from one another, 
differs in form, but not in substance, from that which is 
involved in the relationship of man with nature. A natural- 
istic interpretation of the world cannot, as has been argued, 
invalidate the governing facts of human consciousness. Hence 
the problem how to combine unity with distinction would be 
equally real even if the hypothesis were adopted that the 
universe is a natural and self-explaining whole, without a 
divine ground. 

If there be no divine Father, how does our mother Nature 
gain her way in and through human freedom? To substitute 
a dogma of automatism for the experience of freedom is to beg 
the question in a way that would be considered shameful in a 
theologian. Hence, the problem of unity and distinction is as 
great for the naturalist philosopher as for the Theist, though 
the relations involved in the distinction between impersonal 
nature and personal man are not as profound and many-sided as 
those between a personal God and a personal man. Alike in the 
one case and in the other, facts must be accepted, not explained 
away; and no single fact can be explained in its fullness till 
all is known. 

Yet, God's sovereignty, while it must be not only compatible 
with human freedom, but even fulfilled by means of human 
freedom, has ample conditions and safeguards in human 
nature itself. 

In the first place, God, as the creative ground of human nature, 
determines that nature, giving to it its permanent possibilities, 
its limiting conditions, and the governing ends which determine 
its permanent direction. 

In the second place, human nature thus considered is not 
merely an individual, but a social organism. Hence, the very 
activities which, considered as selfish and sinful, tend to 
defeat the divine purpose, provoke within the organism 
those social reactions by which harmony is restored, and the 



436 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

purpose of God saved through conflict from defeat. The 
fact of lawlessness must therefore not be judged in isolation, 
but in its tendency to evoke the permanent and universal 
law-abiding elements and influences of human life. Human 
history is far more truly the sphere of law than of lawlessness, 
and the victories of law in the highest and deepest sense 
of the term have been produced by the emergencies of 
lawlessness. 

In the third place, the sovereignty of God is secured by the 
permanent spiritual influence which He exercises upon human 
nature, individual and social, as grounded in Him. Slow and 
painful as has been the story of higher progress, that progress 
is real, presents growing signs of reason, and is due to the 
maintenance, expansion, and deepening of the spiritual inspira- 
tion of the race. 

And, lastly, the sovereignty of God is maintained by the 
influence along all these lines of supreme personalities. Eepre- 
senting in their character and aims at once the highest dominance 
of the Divine and the most typical fulfillment of the human, 
they have exercised a spiritual dynamic upon their fellows 
which has permanently molded the direction of human 
affairs and the ideals of human character, conduct, and 
relations. 

II. The second objection raised to the truth of the 
Christian religion viewed as Eedemption is to its doctrine 
of sin. With the establishment of the existence of God and 
of moral freedom comes the recognition of spiritual and moral 
evil in the world. Such evil is in itself the sternest of all 
facts and the most universally admitted. On its objective 
side it represents a divergence from the ideal of humanity, or 
at" least, a failing to realize its ends. It is an exaggeration 
and perversion of some elements of human nature, a failure to 
keep pace wth its progress, and a relapse to standards and 
habits that have been superseded. It is thus a contradiction 
of humanity in the individual, anti-social conduct in a social 
organism, reversion in a progressive community, maniacal 
excess in opposition to reason, animalism and inertia dis- 
figuring and clogging the development of a spiritual character. 
These are the salient features which moral evil assumes on its 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 437 

objective side. So far there is no dispute. But such objective 
departures from tiiat which, because it is ideal, is normal for 
human nature^ are attended by the moral consciousness of 
wrong. The action of conscience imputing responsibility and 
guilt is one of the most distinctive marks of human nature 
and causes the most poignant suffering. The adverse judgment 
of conscience refuses to be explaiaed away. Its characteristic 
testimony is that the act condemned was not inevitable and 
that it is not to be explained away as a mere mistake. It is 
not a mere miscalculation of the intellectual judgment, but 
springs from a deeper source. It is a setting aside, momentary 
or habitual, in the interests of some particular desire, of an 
ideal which reveals itself in consciousness as the rightful law 
of the individual life. That ideal may be colored and its 
authority enforced by the influence of the social environment, 
but these are in themselves powerless to explain its inward- 
ness and constraining nature. No doctrine of social pressure 
has yet been able to account for the conversion of the "I 
musf ^ into the "I ought/' Social tyranny has never been felt 
to be so oppressive and has never been so strenuously resisted 
as when it has assailed this sense of duty. Undoubtedly this 
sense, like every other, exists in various degrees of acuteness, and 
is indefinitely capable either of education or of the reverse. It 
is awakened in primitive stages by humble and natural influences 
which at a later stage of human development cease to possess 
any moral significance. 

But when all abatements have been made, the objective 
fact of evil is accompanied by the subjective side of moral 
condemnation. And both are completed in the religious 
consciousness of sin. Sin is the violation of the law con- 
ceived as expressing the divine will. It marks the action, 
and still more the motive which prompted it, as an infraction 
of the relations between God and the man who is guilty of it. 
It extends to the consciousness of sinfulness, as expressing not 
merely a habit of disobedience, but a spiritual state on the 
part of the sinful man which contradicts the mind and will of 
God. It represents a state of alienation from Him, the falling 
out from the normal relations with Him which are felt to 
correspond to nature and to be essential to blessedness. It 



438 THE CHRISTIAN- RELIGION" 

is clear, therefore, that the sense of sin depends upon the idea 
of God, and the consciousness of relation to Him. , An un- 
worthy or an unstable idea of God, or a weak sense of 
relationship to Him, must necessarily affect the consciousness 
of sin — alike as to its reality and as to the precise temper, 
motives, and conduct in which it consists. According, there- 
fore, to the spirituality, ethical nobility, and comprehensive- 
ness of the doctrine of God is the consciousness of sin. Its 
peculiarity, however, is always that it is not abstract, or con- 
cerned like morality with the abstract qualities of particular 
actions. It is grounded in a consciousness of relations to God; 
it represents the breach of those relations; it brings home to 
the sinner the responsibility of having broken these relations. 
It is not limited by the individual. As he is conscious of being 
a member of the community, so he extends his own consciousness 
of sin to the community, whose moral solidarity with himself 
he intuitively recognizes. Thus, in proportion to his sense of 
individual sinfulness, is his sense of the sinfulness of the race to 
which he belongs. 

1. Such are the facts, so far as they need be stated for our 
immediate purpose. The only way to deal with them from 
the naturalistic point of view is, so to speak, to naturalize the 
facts and to denaturalize the attendant consciousness. That 
is to say, the facts of evil are treated as being naturally bound 
up with the history and development of mankind, while the 
judgment upon the facts passed by the religious and moral 
consciousness is held to be mistaken. 

Such procedure simply eliminates disagreeable facts 
because they are inconsistent with an easy interpretation. 
Moreover, it is not alone the consciousness of sin which is to 
be eliminated, but the consciousness of God and of moral 
freedom. All these together form a coherent whole; but 
each has its peculiar justification, and all together stand, as 
has been seen throughout this inquiry, upon a solid ground, 
which enables them to resist successfully all such question- 
begging attempts to dislodge them. All that is most 
distinctive of man and all that is most immediate in con- 
sciousness must be set aside in order that by the reduction of 
man to mere animality, an animal interpretation of his nature 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 439 

may suffice. Such an attempt, it must be repeated, is not to 
explain, but to explain away. 

And, for the same reason, sin cannot be rationalized. 
That is to say, it is impossible to offer a reason for its 
existence which can neutralize the testimony of conscience 
that it "ought not to be.^' It is, indeed, urged that sin is 
involved in the finitude of human nature, and that, as so in- 
volved, it is a necessary factor in spiritual progress. It has even 
been contended that moral evil is not only essential to the 
development of goodness, but that it is necessary to secure com- 
plete expression of the infinite variety which is implicit in 
human nature, considered as a whole. From this latter stand- 
point, therefore, it is held to have substantially the same 
justification as any ordinary differences of intellectual endow- 
ment or of temperament. 

Such a view not only overlooks what is distinctive of 
moral consciousness, but it involves a confusion of thought. 
It is doubtless essential to the development of finite personality, 
that there should be a sense of "otherness" from God. The 
very fact that man emerges from nature and becomes growingly 
conscious of individuality involves not only that he dis- 
tinguishes himself from nature, but also that he distinguishes 
himself from God. The attempt to sublate that distinction, 
even if it is made under the influence of religious mysticism, 
is destructive of human personality, and as such, carries with 
it eventually a relapse into nature. Hence it is that certain 
forms of mystic exaltation which have sought to transcend the 
limitations of finite personality, have always been unmoral in 
their nature, and frequently immoral in their tendency. 
The primary condition of the free self-surrender to God 
in which religion finds its blessedness is that there should be 
a self to be surrendered, and that the distinction of that self 
should be throughout not only maintained, but even emphasized 
by religion. 

We are dealing with something far deeper and more far- 
reaching than mere differences of temperament. So far as 
these are concerned, moral judgment discriminates between 
peculiarities of disposition and differences of moral conduct. 
The former are treated as inevitable, whether they act to the 



440 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

advantage or disadvantage of particular individuals. The 
latter are always the subject of praise or blame on the ground 
that the individual is himself responsible for them; and this 
independently of the Judgment which the community may take 
of them. For while undoubtedly the judgment of thfe com- 
munity has much influence in shaping the standards of morality, 
there comes a stage when the primary moral duty impressed 
upon the consciences of individuals is to create a new morality. 
When this task is laid upon them the acutest condemnation 
would be felt by them if they should falter on account of the 
adverse judgment of society, although that judgment might be 
practically unanimous. 

The sense of otherness from God is in itself an indispensable 
stage of spiritual and moral development. It is equally necessary 
in the interests of religion and theology. But for this it would 
be absolutely impossible to conceive God as being personal, as 
possessing spiritual and moral attributes, and as exercising 
influence not merely by physical, but by spiritual means. Thus, 
all the interests of religion, reason, and morality are bound 
up with the emphasis upon the personal distinction or otherness 
of man from God. 

But otherness is one thing, alienation is another. The fact 
of sin on its religious side, as apart from the moral quality of 
any particular action, may be expressed by saying that the 
otherness, which is essential to human personality in all its 
interests, has passed into alienation as a state, not only of 
distinction, but of opposition, and therefore as a fixed state to 
be maintained instead of being a stage to be transcended. In 
other words, sin perverts the distinction of individuality into 
isolation. This isolation is negatively a recoil from God, but 
positively this recoil is attended by the particular aims, 
desires, and ideals which we call selfish. Thus, sin looked 
upon as alienation from God means the breaking off, so far as 
this is humanly possible, of spiritual relations with Him. Its 
result is the substitution of the particular self, which follows 
upon the dethronement of God. The particular consequence, 
therefore, of sin as a principle of alienation and selfishness is 
the setting up of self over against the community. The 
otherness which is essential to personal relations to God, is 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 441 

equally essential to personal relations with our fellow men. In 
regard to them also otherness may pass into alienation, and 
alienation has as its positive principle the selfishness which 
results in an anti-social disposition and conduct. 

But when this state of alienation is reached it is naturally 
conditioned by the unwillingness of man to become a spiritual 
and moral personality. Personal distinction may be welcome, 
but the legitimate use of that distinction as a means of 
entering into spiritual and moral relations with God and with 
mankind is unwelcome. Hence, the drag of mere nature is 
felt at the moment when man emerges from nature. Hence, 
human sin as alienation from God and selfishness is not so 
much due to pride and ambition, as in Milton^s conception of 
Satan, as to animalism with its peculiar instincts, appetites, 
and passions, whether of self-indulgence or of self-assertion. 
Thus, alienation from God is attended by a falling back into 
nature, which is in the highest sense unnatural. The sense of 
sin stigmatizes it as such. It might perhaps be supposed that 
man, placed midway between the spiritual and the animal, 
would but bewail his misfortune when, owing to the weight 
which clogs him, he sinks below his ideal as a spiritual being. 
But he refuses to make this allowance for himself, or if he 
makes it, it is at an advanced stage of moral degeneration. 
By doing what, upon any theory that either naturalizes or 
rationalizes evil, he is not only entitled but compelled to do, 
he unfits himself for his position and task in the moral world 
which is the indispensable correlate of human life. Hence, 
the man who so uses his individuality as to exclude the law 
of God from his will, the satisfaction of God from his desires, 
and the ideal of God from his endeavors, stands self- 
condemned. The ground of his condemnation is that he has 
abused the nature of finite personality, holding it back from 
its complete expression in relationship to God and to the world 
in God, and thereby destroying alike its meaning and worth. 
The complete facts of human finitude in its relation to God 
and to the world intensify instead of annulling the consciousness 
of sin. 

2. It is urged that the doctrine of sin is contrary to the 
idea and to the fact of evolution. To the doctrine of the Fall 



4:4:2 THE CHEISTIAN^ RELIGION 

of man it is objected that mankind is a risen and not a fallen 
race. It is necessary to examine this contention carefully, 
not simply by way of criticism, but also in order to perceive 
more clearly what is really involved in the Christian doctrine 
upon this subject. So far as the idea of evolution is concerned, 
it is, or ought to be, governed by the facts. It is true that it 
is not entirely suggested by the facts of merely objective 
nature. If objectively the conception has been derived from 
biology, yet it has been strengthened and enriched from the 
subjective side by the consciousness of ordered and gradual 
development within personal life. The whole conception, 
therefore, rests upon the impression produced by the facts of 
inner and outer life taken in union with one another. In this 
sense it is the fact that must govern the conception, and not the 
other way about. Doubtless as the conception is confirmed and 
enlarged by an ever-growing body of facts, the burden of the 
proof will rest more heavily upon those who allege that excep- 
tions are anywhere to be found. Perhaps such seeming 
exceptions may ultimately be found to fall within the general 
conception, though it is equally likely that that general con- 
ception itself wiU need to be in some respects modified in order 
to include them. 

So far as the facts themselves are concerned, it is clear 
that progress has not been universal in the case either of 
races or of individuals. There are at least many cases where 
the life-history of a particular people or a particular indi- 
vidual can only be described as a "FalV^ however the fact may 
be explained. Moreover, human progress is not in spite of 
moral freedom, but by means of it. Progress is the ideal task 
set before freedom, and it is clearly manifest that the ideal 
may be renounced and may gradually fade away in any 
particular case. 

Yet more, apart from particular cases, careful examination 
may enable us to combine the doctrine of the Fall, spiritually 
understood, with the fact that humanity as a whole is a risen 
race, showing marks of steady progress, even if slow, un- 
certain, and only partial. To begin with, much of the progress 
which is commonly called secular is compatible with spiritual 
and even moral decline. Increased command over the material 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 443 

resources of life in the interests of physical efficiency and 
well-being is sometimes purchased at the cost of the highest 
and noblest ideals of life. There may be a secular use of God 
instead of a spiritual service of God. Such are the limitations 
of man that many an era of marked material progress is 
haunted by the sense of the betrayal of still higher and more 
commanding ends of life. The Christian doctrine, therefore, 
could not be rebutted by reference to the feats of engineering, 
the progress of sanitation, the increased complexity of economic 
organization, or even the development of scientific interests and 
aptitudes. 

Yet, confining our contention to the real problem, which 
is concerned with the spiritual and moral condition of man- 
kind, it may be confidently affirmed that mankind, regarded 
as a whole, is a risen race, if particular exceptions, collective 
and individual, are admitted. The question is whether this 
excludes the reality of the spiritual experience which suggests 
and verifies the doctrine of the ^Tall." It may be argued that 
it does not. 

Three main factors are operative upon and within human 
life. There is the immanent activity of the divine Spirit. 
There is the steadfast environment of the physical universe. 
There is also the normal constitution of human nature itself. 
These together form an indissoluble unity. Human free will, 
however perversely exercised, can only operate within the 
limits marked out and guarded by this threefold combination. 
Throughout the whole the governing factor is not man's free- 
dom, but God's encompassing presence and activity. It is due 
to this that progress to a spiritual goal is the governing law of 
the world's history and the task set to moral freedom. Not only 
are limits set to the Fall of man, so that to exceed these limits 
is either impossible or would involve self-destruction, but 
there is a spiritual energy unceasingly operative to realize 
within him the ideal which is the vital purpose of his 
being. Sin represents simply the resistance to this spiritual 
energy; whether the resistance of rebellion, or of inertia and 
indifference. 

Thus, it is certainly possible that the consciousness of sin 
with its attendant sense of failure and of fall should be 



444 THE CHRISTIAlf RELIGION 

held within the governing fact of spiritual progress. That 
spiritual progress is the governing fact is owing to the 
immanent activity and inspiration of God, conditioned by His 
pressure upon man through the environment which is consti- 
tuted by God as His instrument in securing His spiritual 
ends. If the doctrine of the Fall be so held as to involve that 
man has ever fallen out of relation to God and been able 
entirely and universally to defeat the divine purpose and to 
overthrow the divine power, then it is equally untrue to facts 
and inconsistent with reason. If, on the other hand, it be 
understood that the limited autonomy of man does not give 
him complete sovereignty, even over himself, still more that it 
does not exclude the sovereign activity of God within man- 
kind, then it is possible to include as one of the factors in the 
whole that conversion of otherness into alienation which con- 
sists in resistance to the will of God and the sense of guilt 
which attends it. Thus, spiritual progress has from the indi- 
vidual standpoint its exceptions, and from the universal stand- 
point its inertia, caused not by the resistance of dead matter, 
but by the divergent desires of responsible agents whose 
resistance brings to them the sense that they have fallen by 
means of it from that union with God which constitutes the 
blessedness of man. 

3. It is in the light of these considerations that we must 
regard the present condition of the world. The frequent 
phrase that this is '^a ruined world," is overstrained, in the 
same way as the doctrine of sin is overstrained when it is 
represented that total depravity means that human nature, as 
we know it, has become completely worthless through sin. 
In any strict sense of the term, a ruined world would be no 
world at all. In order to be a world, there must be an 
immanent order, law, and purpose binding all things together. 
Were these absolutely to fail, there would be no world at all. 
While spiritual order persists and manifests itself in human 
progress, it is clear that the world can only be ruined in 
a modified sense. 

The extremer statements upon this subject find their 
biblical support by over-emphasizing certain passages of St. 
Paul's writings in separation from their context and from the 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 445 

whole of his thought. The depth of his own experience of sin 
and of his natural helplessness to resist it is set in connection 
with such appalling evidences of human depravity as are 
furnished in the first three chapters of the Epistle to the 
Eomans. The result is to universalize his own experience; 
^^I know tliat in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good 
thing." This is the characteristic utterance of the most 
spiritual religion. But this is not to affirm that the Apostle 
ever completely identifies all that is involved in his own 
personality with his flesh. It is true that two alternatives of 
life are presented by him, the one that of being "in the flesh/' 
the other that of being "in the spirit." These two represent 
the determining and pervading conditions of life. Yet the 
very fact that a man is sold under sin and becomes its slave 
reveals the still persisting capacity for freedom. A beast of 
burden cannot be a slave in any real sense, because it has no 
capacity for freedom in the true sense of the word. A man 
can be enslaved because he has this capacity, and slavery 
is the express contradiction of it. Hence the very fact that 
sin is always a slavery shows that other factors in human 
nature besides sinfulness must be taken into account. And 
this becomes abundantly clear when St. PauFs writings are 
taken as a whole. When he is dealing with the sharp antithesis 
between sin and grace, between the flesh and the spirit, it is 
natural and necessary that he should identify the former with 
man and the latter with God. But grace and the Spirit must 
have a spiritual point of connection with the man who is 
redeemed by them. Overwhelmed with sinfulness as he may 
be, there must be a point of contact between the sinner and 
God which makes redemption a spiritual possibility. But for 
this, man could never become conscious of sin. It is the living 
ideal of holiuess within him. which condemns his sin. Thus 
his overwhelming consciousness of sin is in itself the testi- 
mony to the presence within him of spiritual life with all its 
possibilities. 

Such is a necessary inference from the facts. But St. Paul 
does not leave it to be iuferred. His doctrine that the second 
Adam is a "quickening spirit" for mankind, still more his 
doctrine that aU things are made through and unto the Son of 



446 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

God, SO that they have their coherence in Him, supplies a 
clear doctrinal account of universal relations between the Son 
of God and the human race, which supply the basis and the 
means of His redemptive work. This God-ward relationship, 
although its spiritual and moral possibilities have never been 
realized, or have even been largely set aside, is a vital part of 
St. Paul's doctrine of human nature and must have equal 
significance assigned to it with his doctrine of human 
depravity. The Son of God represents, it may be said, the 
divine universal of humanity stamping a filial constitution 
upon the world, according to the measure of its capacity, and 
preeminently upon man. Thus the divine is inmost; regener- 
ating, constituting, and molding human nature. Conversion 
and regeneration would be impossible were this not the case. 
Sin stands for the alienation of the sinful individual from the 
divine universal in which his own being is constituted. 
Hence sin is unnatural and corrupt. But the inner constitu- 
tion remains a divine possibility. There is the inmost conflict 
between divine grace and the human will. But the will, 
however rebellious, cannot altogether destroy the presence of 
the divine. Thus, in concrete reality, the worthlessness of 
the flesh does not exclude the underlying presence of the 
Spirit, not merely along the frontiers of human life, but 
actually invading its territory. Hence the fundamental idea 
of all religion is that of a return to a union with God which 
has been lost. The basis, possibility, and attraction of such 
a return is always present in different degrees of revelation 
and influence. The Christian doctrine never sees man as 
totally apart from God except for such abstract purposes as 
are illustrated by the writings of St. Paul. Sin is universal, 
but it has never become naturalized. Had this been the case,' 
the knowledge of sin would have passed away as completely 
as sensation from a mortified limb. The consciousness of sin, 
therefore, is evidence that sin is not supreme. History is the 
story of redemption from sin, and involves the predominance 
of the spiritual conditions without which redemption is 
impossible. 

III. The Christian doctrine of redemption sets forth a 
transcendent dealing of God with mankind. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 447 

It has already been seen that moral personality involves 
a new relationship to God, though the form of that relation- 
ship is foreshadowed in the measure of independence which is 
conferred upon nature, in so far as that which is moral can be 
foreshadowed by that which is not. The result of the spiritual 
relationship between God and mankind is made manifest in 
the ordered process of history . This process involves not 
merely outward events, but still more the spiritual in- 
fluences which underlie those events. Human history, there- 
fore, is accounted for, above all, by these influences, and 
not merely by biological forces. Without such a conception 
of the reality and supremacy of spiritual influence in 
human history the Christian belief must necessarily fall to the 
ground. 

The reason for that conception is twofold. It has an ob- 
jective side; that is to say, history appears as an unfolding of 
a spiritual order of things, the fulfillment of a spiritual pur- 
pose. It has also a subjective side. The consciousness of 
spiritual influence has been felt most strongly by those who 
have exercised the most decisive influence upon the spiritual 
history of the race. They have been supremely conscious of a 
divinely appointed task, and of a divinely given inspiration. 
Yet in this consciousness they do not stand alone; the 
spiritual experience of great multitudes of humbler men has 
verified their testimony. "Yet not I, but the grace of 
God which was with me," is the witness not only of every 
apostolic life, but also of innumerable other lives which have 
risen to the vision of a divine meaning in the world and to a 
sense of duty to take part in giving effect to it. And the 
experience of this larger circle is not without a yet wider veri- 
fication. At least momentary gleams of such a vision, and 
occasional attractions to such a spiritual response have been felt 
by countless others whose lives have not been altogether guided 
and governed by them. 

But to this conception objection is taken — 

First of all from the standpoint of natural science. What 
is the need, it is urged, of such spiritual dealings of God with 
men? Is not biological evolution sufficient for all purposes? 
^ay, is it not the real cause of all these supposed higher 



448 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

manifestations? What, further, is the possibility of such 
spiritual dealings in an ordered system where law prevails to 
the exclusion of arbitrary interference? Even supposing these 
difficulties to be surmounted, at what point does such an inter- 
vention take place ? How is it possible to separate between the 
natural order of things and the supernatural intervention, either 
in the wide sphere of human history, or within the narrow con- 
fines of personal experience? 

Si 'i objections, while they may in part be excused by 
the crude statements not seldom made by Christian advocates 
and apologists, betray a complete misconception and rest 
upon a totally inadequate philosophy of evolution. The 
general dealings of God with mankind, and even the work 
of redemption, cannot be an intervention in that strictest 
sense of the term which involves conflict with scientific 
truth. The infiuence of God upon the spiritual life of man, 
whether individual or collective, can at its highest be only 
a complete manifestation in fullest activity of that which 
has been present in potentiality throughout. Moments of 
special manifestation there may be, yet these reveal a presence 
already there, and fulfill a promise previously existent and 
rationally prepared. Eevelation, redemption, inspiration do 
not bring God to the succor of men from outside, but make 
manifest His abiding presence within human nature. This 
is true even of such an event as the Incarnation, however 
unique may have been the means by which it was brought 
about. That event, whatever may be the explanation of 
it, stands out by all confession with a prominence which 
belongs to no other event in human history. Yet it is not 
an unrelated miracle. It represents a realization of person- 
ality and influence which, unparalleled though it is, has 
many lesser, yet not the less true, illustrations in other great 
providential personalities of history. It finds its place in a con- 
tinuous process of spiritual development. Its very effect shows 
that it is correlated in the most intimate way with spiritual 
conditions and forces operating in and throughout human nature 
to its widest extent. 

On the other hand, the whole course of this inquiry has 
been in vain if it has not made good the necessity that the 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 449 

idea of evolution as applied to man must recognize and do 
justice to both sides of that which is revealed in spiritual, 
and, above all, in the Christian consciousness, namely the 
divine and human. The union, yet distinction of these two 
in the religious consciousness is, it has been contended 
throughout, the starting-point without which human nature 
and the world become unintelligible. Hence, no doctrine of 
mere biological evolution can be stretched to cover all the 
facts. Even if man, considered as such, could be biologically 
explained, yet man can only for abstract purposes be separated 
from the Divine Ground in whom he lives and moves and 
has his being. Hence the ultimate explanation of all that 
concerns man must be found in God. Above all, God is the 
governing principle and factor of human evolution. From 
the religious standpoint, the general veracity of which this 
inquiry has upheld, God stands in permanent and immanent 
relation to man and to the world, which have their unity in 
Him. His life conditions, and His self-manifestation keeps 
pace with, human development; and yet is not to be con- 
fused with it. Hence, this primary fact of the inter-relation 
between divine and human personality involved in the very 
existence of man gives both the possibility and the certainty 
of a transcendent manifestation of God in human conscious- 
ness. It also fixes the general characteristics of that manifesta- 
tion, although its method is beyond our present comprehension. 
For while we may, and indeed, owing to our limitations, must 
illustrate the influence of God upon man, whether in inward 
experience, or, in the events of history, by the influence of 
man upon his fellow men, yet it is clear that all such illustra- 
tions must in the nature of the case be so inadequate that if 
they are pressed too far they become misleading. The most 
intimate personal relations between man and man may serve 
as an image, but can never set forth the full meaning of the 
relations between God and man, since the presence of the divine 
personality is within and not merely without the human which 
is influenced by it. 

The second objection arises from a limited philosophic 
standpoint. It is the fault of one-sided intellectualism in 
philosophy that it seeks to find in God merely the Idea, by 



I 



450 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

means of which the conception of the world is unified. He, 
therefore, becomes rather the last generalization of abstract 
thought than the active source of purposes finding pro- 
gressive realization in the history of the world. It is not 
suflScient to place God at the heart of things in idea, unless 
we remember that the universe can only be explained in 
terms, not merely of concepts for the mind, but of ends for 
the will of God. Anything short of this will ultimately 
prove to be an insufficient means of unifying the world for 
thought. The defect of pure intellectualism in philosophy is 
that it has never been able to do justice to the experiences 
of ordered change. The idealism of Plato broke down in 
its attempt to connect the ideal world of reason with the 
changing phenomena of time and sense. The philosophy of 
Hinduism failed through the same inability. And much 
European philosophy has become hopelessly inconsistent 
because its sharp separation between the intellectual and 
the practical has led to the establishment of separate doctrines 
for the one and for the other, which not only refuse to unite 
in a consistent whole, but, therefore, prove insufficient for 
the half which they undertake to explain. An abstract 
generalization does not convey an historic explanation. 
For the latter, power, purpose, and personality are all- 
important. 

Directly we study the world from the historic as dis- 
tinguished from the conceptual point of view, we find that its 
whole course blends transcendence with continuity; that 
higher principles and factors become growingly manifest in 
it, though they work in and through all that which has 
gone before. The most difficult problem for thought is to 
do justice alike to the transcendence and to the continuity. 
The transcendence of man is revealed in all that is involved 
in his personality. Yet that personality is not self-contained 
and complete. Man is at least dimly conscious of relation- 
ship to the infinite Ground which underlies his being, seeks 
to articulate the relations in which he stands to that divine 
Ground, and experiences a need of spiritual satisfaction which, 
instead of withering into vain regret, blossoms into confident 
expectation. It is at this point that men must seek and find. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 451 

or rather be found, by a God who satisfies spiritual expecta- 
tion. The highest in man — his faith, hope, and love — must 
correspond to and reveal a Source infinitely richer and more 
glorious than himself. It is as irrational as it is unsatisfy- 
ing to present the God who is revealed in stellar systems 
and chemical molecules to the saint, the hero, or even to the 
ordinary^ man who is possessed by the affections and aspira- 
tions which make up what is noblest and yet most natural 
in mankind. If a sufficient cause must be found for physical 
nature, at least equally must a sufficient cause be found for 
the spiritual nature of man. If every appetite and instinct 
of the animal is a means by which ;N"ature brings it to re- 
spond to its environment, so must it be with the aspirations 
of the human heart. Unless this be so, all that is highest 
and most influential in man is proved to be irrational. The 
impossible paradox is presented to us that the forces by 
which rational progress has been brought about are them- 
selves irrational. The fact that every power of man, rational, 
moral, affectional, and religious, goes out to seek and actually 
posits a transcendent divine object is a sure sign, if the 
world be rational, that that object exists; that it must exceed 
and not faU short of the spiritual perfection attributed to 
it by the conceptions of man; and that the reality of the 
personal relations which exist between God and man is as 
clearly and convincingly revealed in spiritual consciousness 
as the reality of energy is revealed in the phenomena of 
physical nature. The spiritual consciousness is at least as 
much entitled to hold its ground as the facts and forces of 
the physical world. If it is right to attribute to the source 
of the universe that which is sufficient to explain its physical 
characteristics, it is equally right to attribute to that source 
the spiritual qualities which are manifest to and in the 
spiritual life itself. N^ay, we have a stronger justification for 
so doing. The knowledge of the spiritual consciousness is 
more immediate than that of the external world. Hence the 
belief that God deals with the personality of man in ways 
transcending His dealings with impersonal nature is made 
good to us by the highest reason; indeed, on the same grounds 
which give assurance that He who calls into existence and 



452 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

deals with free personalities is Himself supreme and sovereign 
Personality. 

IV. It is objected that the Christian doctrine of Eedemption 
sets forth an external and incidental remedy for sin. That 
such a remedy should be external and accidental implies in the 
circumstances that it is unspiritual. The unspiritual is 
equivalent to the irrational. If, therefore, the work of Christ 
be really external and accidental, it can be no remedy at all in 
the real sense of the word. 

It must at once be admitted that for many of the misconcep- 
tions held upon this subject crude and misleading statements 
by Christians themselves are largely responsible. It is un- 
necessary here to do more than note the fact that theories of 
redemption have frequently introduced into their account of 
the matter analogies, commercial, forensic, and political, which, 
while corresponding to passing phases of thought, have been 
without warrant in Scripture, and are altogether inadequate 
and misleading when applied to the dealings of God with 
mankind. 

It is of the greatest importance at the outset to realize that 
while the Scriptures set forth, as has been seen, a transcendent 
dealing of God with mankind, their account is in no respect 
open to the general objection which is now stated. So far from 
redemption being in any way represented as due to an accidental 
intervention, the greatest care is taken to combine the doctrine 
of the active grace of God with the spiritual life and the normal 
historic development of mankind. 

This may be illustrated, in the first place, from the 
Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. These prophecies 
include the appearance of the Messianic King, the atonement 
of the prophetic Servant of Jehovah, the ideal priesthood pre- 
dicted by Zechariah, together with the whole series of predic- 
tions which contemplate the perfecting of mankind and the 
renovation of the world as consequent upon the completion of 
spiritual redemption. There is one universal feature about 
all these. They represent an ideal fulfillment, a consummate 
expression of influences already at work. In the case alike 
of the Messianic King, the prophetic Victim, and the ideal 
Priest, the grace of God raises a typically human factor to 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 453 

the highest conceivable standard of spiritual efficacy. In each 
case the office is idealized and its intrinsic functions are fulfilled 
by a human personality in whom the presence of God is made 
perfectly manifest. 

If in the person of the Redeemer the Divine is perfectly mani- 
fested in and through the human, so His work, whether of 
government, atonement, or mediation, is successful because it is 
the complete, and therefore unique, spiritual embodiment of the 
grace by which and for which all these offices naturally subsist 
in the providence of God. Thus the divinity of the source in no 
wise destroys the naturalness of the fulfillment. It is in its 
complete realization of the t}7)e that its unique nature consists, 
the difference in degree being so great that it constitutes a 
difference in kind. 

So the whole work of God in the renovation and consum- 
mation of creation appears as the larger and more generous 
bestowal of life-giving influences which are already, if only 
partiaUy, at work. Thus the work of redemption, as it is set 
before us in the writings of Isaiah, for example, is simply the 
final and perfect manifestation of the continuous dealings of 
God with man. It is transcendent indeed, yet only as all 
fulfillment is transcendent. The final work of God is not the 
intervention of an outsider who has been inactive hitherto, 
but is the culminating revelation of an activity ceaselessly 
sovereign in all the affairs of men and throughout all the 
realms of nature. Thus in the Old Testament prophecies 
there is no such contrast as we have become accustomed to 
between the natural and the supernatural, or between the 
creative and the redemptive dispensations of God. Both 
elements are blended, the result being that the total effect 
represents a unique combination of the divine and the 
human, of the spiritually effective and the naturally 
conditioned. 

The same impression is conveyed when we turn to the 
portraiture of our Lord in the Gospels. His Eedeemership 
appears to be based upon, to grow out of, His complete natural 
expression of the ideal, and therefore eternally real, meaning 
of human nature itself. As Son of Man He reveals humanity 
to itself. In this lies His capacity to become the Redeemer 



454 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

of maiikiiid. His saving work is the natural result of this 
spiritual fulfillment. The divine presence in Him is not 
occasionally flashed out as distinct from His human nature, 
but is manifested throughout it. The view of human nature 
set forth by Him, while grave and solemn, is not somber, but 
even genial. If He is Redeemer it is because He is Consum- 
mator and Fulfiller. If He pities and saves the sinful it is 
because He recognizes and calls out the potentially spiritual 
and divine. Judged by all ordinary standards. His influence 
is throughout supernatural. Yet it is not therefore external. 
His presence and influence within human history shows that 
He belongs to it, and belongs to it because of His essential 
relationship to mankind. Further, this essential relationship 
is not obscured, but is brought out and emphasized, by the 
apostolic writers. The Pauline experience of sin and of 
redemption by grace, the Johannine contrast between light 
and darkness, life and death, do not set aside the essential 
relation between the Eedeemer and His work on the one hand 
and those whom He redeems on the other. On the contrary, 
St. Paul and St. John give dogmatic expression to the under- 
lying spiritual unity between Christ and man which impresses 
us in the Gospel stories. As the matter is presented to us in 
the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, in the first Epistle of 
St. John, and in Col. i. 15-18, there is so close a relation- 
ship between Christ, the Son of God, and human nature, that 
He eternally constitutes its meaning and redeems it because of 
His creative and consummating presence throughout it. Hence 
it may be confidently asserted that Redemption, according to 
the New Testament doctrine, so far from being external, rests 
upon the internal relation of the Redeemer to mankind; that, 
in short, its spiritual efficacy is bound up with this inherent and 
essential relationship. 

Hence the redemptive action of divine grace as set forth 
in the Christian religion does not involve the introduction into 
the system of the world of any external agency or the activity 
of any principle of divine conduct which is not involved in 
the creation, upholding, and perfecting of the world. The 
redemptive work of Christ is the complete manifestation of 
the realities which originally constituted the spiritual world. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 455 

^ave to it its meaning, and are the means by which its end is 
fulfilled. The mode of their manifestation, and the way in 
which they operate, is profoundly influenced by the fact of sin. 
Yet sin, terrible as is its significance, simply calls into special 
redemptive activity spiritual energies of love and grace, without 
which the very existence of the world cannot be explained. 
Thus the work of Christ stands not only in line, but in vital 
connection with the creative activity of God. It at once 
manifests all that is implicit in creation, and gives to it a new 
glory in its redemptive grace. 

This may be seen clearly, in the first instance, by examina- 
tion of what is involved in the general conception of grace. 
As represented in the Christian religion it is the complete 
manifestation of all that is contained in the original relation- 
ship of the Godhead to mankind. It is the supreme revelation 
of the Fatherhood of God dealing with the guilt and need of 
man. Yet without that Fatherhood and the wealth of com- 
passion which is inherent in it, the very existence of the 
world cannot be explained. Grace is the divine succor 
brought by the Son of God. Yet the possibility and efficacy 
of that succor depends upon a primal spiritual relationship be- 
tween the Son of God and mankind which makes Him from the 
beginning alike the stay and the goal of the humanity to whose 
rescue He comes. And the same is true of the gift and activity 
of the Holy Spirit. Thus, according to the Christian view, the 
work of redemption does not create an accidental relationship 
between God and man, but fulfills the meaning and reveals the 
possibilities contained in the original relationship. 

Again, the whole work of redemption is a progressive 
manifestation of the energy of the divine self-giving to 
and in humanity. God gives Himself to man and in man in 
the fullness of His grace. This self-giving of the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Spirit is the consummate expression of the 
eternal love of God, without which no such world, as we 
see slowly unfolding its meaning, could have come to be. The 
very embodiment of grace in a supreme human personality, 
and the exertion of its energy within the spiritual life of men, 
is the highest example of the way in which all God's gifts to 
men are conveyed. 



456 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION- 

Thus the transcendent action of God in redemption depends 
upon an immanent potentiality which it fulfills. The gracious 
activity of God is internal, although the fact that sin hardens 
men into alienation from God makes redemption inevitably 
appear to them as external, as the breaking down of barriers from 
without, the bringing of help from above. So indeed it is ; but 
by the triumphant operation of gracious influence implicit 
throughout, but antagonized by sin. 

In this light the Incarnation, Atonement, and the gift of the 
Spirit, in particular, must be regarded. 

1. The Incarnation is the transcendent fulfillment of the 
possibilities contained in the divine immanence in mankind. 
From the divine side it is the complete revelation of the 
divine glory and presence in human nature. On the human 
side it is the supreme expression of the spiritual meaning 
contained in human nature itself. This combination of the 
complete manifestation of God with the highest perfection of 
man is fulfilled in an individual life which brings about the 
complete union of the divine and human factors. The Incar- 
nation is, therefore, at once the fulfillment of the divine pres- 
ence in human nature and the fulfillment of human nature in 
its divine relations. Each is coextensive with the other, and 
there is no opposition between the two. The divine glory 
does not shine out independently, or in spite of the himianity, 
but in it and because of it. The divinity of Christ has been 
manifested in His ideal fulfillment of the spiritual meaning of 
humanity as constituted in Him; not in any necessary contrast 
between the two. The creaturely relation of man to the eternal 
Son of God is such that man has essential affinity with the 
divine nature, although the spiritual and moral effects of that 
affinity are set aside by sin. The Incarnation is the supreme 
consequence and revelation of that affinity, and of its spiritual 
and moral significance, unclouded by sin, and therefore revealing 
the divine purpose in mankind. 

The verification of the reality of the Incarnation, the original 
belief in which rests upon the testimony of the self -consciousness 
of Christ Himself, lies in the following features. 

(1) In the transcendent spiritual greatness of the person- 
ality of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Incarnation itself. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 457 

when all the circumstances are taken into account, is a supreme 
testimony to the unique impression produced by His perfection 
upon His followers and upon all men possessing spiritual 
susceptibility from the apostolic age until now. In the 
majesty of His glory Christ stands alone, and His lonely 
supremacy is the more impressive from the fact that it triumphs 
over, and in a sense obliterates, the homeliness and humiliation 
of His earthly lot. 

(2) In the divine and harmonious naturalness of His 
appearance. Wide and deep as is the separation between Him 
and the humanity of His own time and of all time, yet His 
appearance blends the supernatural with the natural in a way 
that brings home the conviction of a special presence of God. 
The Incarnation is not an arbitrary miracle, but stands in 
closest relation to the divine activity throughout the universe 
in all its history. 

(3) In the fact that the appearance of Christ marks at once 
a great spiritual fulfillment, and constitutes a new beginning 
in the history of mankind. 

(4) In its illuminating power. To reject the truth that God 
was manifest in Christ is to reject, as has been seen throughout 
these pages, all possibility of explaining God, man, and the 
world in their nature and mutual relations. 

(5) And, lastly, in its redemptive eflBcacy. The history of the 
world ever since bears ever-growing testimony to the unique and 
all-sufficient power of Christ, and of Christ alone, to illuminate, 
renew, and satisfy men, at once reclaiming the worst, and 
bringing to the best an ideal satisfaction of mind, heart, and 
character which can be found only in Him. 

That the Incarnation finds its place in a consistent spiritual 
history, and operates by means of the general laws of human 
life, does not set aside, but rather emphasizes its divinely 
unique nature, while rescuing the conception of it from all 
such abstract distinctions as would bring it into contradiction 
with the ordered wisdom of God, made manifest in the history 
of the world. 

2. The doctrine of the Atonement has, perhaps, suffered 
more seriously than any other from the influence of mere 
externalism. If the divine influence manifest in it from 



I 



458 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

above be represented as an intervention altogether from with- 
out, there are added to the metaphysical difficulty of such a 
conception spiritual and moral objections of the gravest kind. 
The commercial, forensic, and political analogies by which its 
reason and meaning have often been set forth, even if any of 
them can illustrate it, cannot explain it. They are destitute 
of scriptural warrant. Moreover, they lead to mechanical 
views concerning the death of Christ as a historic event. 
But the most far-reaching objection to them is that they are 
only in accordance with conceptions of the relationship of 
God to men which are altogether inadequate to set forth the 
reality. No human analogies can be in themselves adequate 
to express the relationship of God to men, which is clearly 
sui generis. Yet, as will subsequently appear, the relation- 
ship of Fatherhood not only dominates the New Testament, 
but offers the nearest approach which the conditions of 
creaturely life can furnish to the relationship of God to man. 
Whatever force, therefore, there may be in views which 
represent God as the Creator, the Judge, or the Sovereign 
of mankind, all these conceptions must be subordinated to 
the fatherly, and the relations and functions signified 
by them must be molded and inspired throughout by principles 
and motives which are applicable to that highest relation- 
ship. Even when all this has been realized in thought, it is 
necessary to enlarge the conception of the Fatherhood of 
God, in order to admit the fact of His immanence, before the 
reasoning which is based even upon that relationship can 
afford completely trustworthy guidance to the meaning of the 
Atonement. 

All explanations, therefore, of the nature of the Atone- 
ment must be based upon and seen to be the direct outcome 
of the relationship in which God stands to men. Again, re- 
garding the matter from the standpoint of the Incarnation, 
the death of Christ is the complete fulfillment of that which 
is involved in His entrance into human life. It completes 
the union of the Son of God with the lot of men. The death 
must, therefore, be interpreted in the light of the Incarna- 
tion which led up to it; and the Incarnation is the witness 
to an underlying unity between God and man which contains 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 459 

within itself the means of reconciliation, despite the fact 
and influence of sin. The atoning Christ brings to bear, if 
the expression may be allowed, the full force of this unity, in 
order to destroy the discord of sin with all that is involved in 
it. The very possibility of the Atonement, therefore, depends 
upon such a complete spiritual solidarity between Christ and 
mankind as constitutes Him, not merely in name but in inmost 
spiritual reality the representative of mankind. Finally, there- 
fore, the death of Christ is, in the ordinary sense of the term, 
a natural, historic event. It is not artificially arranged either 
by Christ Himself or by the providence of God. It is as com- 
pletely explained as the result of spiritual and natural causes 
as any other great tragedy of history. 

The Christian doctrine of Atonement, taking account of these 
governing conditions, is concerned with the meaning, the value, 
and the influence of the death of Christ as manifest in the 
spiritual experience of believers. As to this, four propositions 
may be laid down. 

(1) In the first place, the Offerer possesses, reveals, and ful- 
fills the spiritual nature, grounded in God, which represents the 
spiritual potentiality of mankind, and is the underlying bond 
which unites mankind as a spiritual organism. The unity of 
mankind can only be fulfilled in and by that which was divinely 
manifest in Christ. This meaning is contained in St. PauFs 
great declaration, "All things have been created through Him, 
and unto Him; and He is before aU things, and in Him all 
things consist'^ (Col. i. 16, 17). 

(2) His death is the ideally perfect act of self -surrender to 
the Father's will as wrought out under the conditions of His 
earthly life. In that act the Son of God completed in per- 
fect righteousness and self-devotion His fulfillment of the 
relations in which He stood alike to God and man. The self- 
realization of Christ as the Son of God is consummated by 
the Cross. 

(3) This consummation is realized under conditions which 
cause it to be the fulfillment of a task and the winning of a 
spiritual victory. The besetting conditions which try the 
faith, baffle the reason, trouble the conscience, and shatter 
the hopes of men gather in a unique combination, and make an 



460 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

unparalleled onset upon Christ by means of His Cross. It is 
at the first sight a startling contradiction of the message and 
the ruthless violation of the spirit of His life. Under such con- 
ditions He makes the final and triumphant oblation of trustful 
and self-surrendering love, affirming for Himself and for 
mankind the righteousness of God. 

His dying cry, ^Tather, into Thy hands I commend my 
spirit/' proclaims the complete victory of the faith and love 
by which alone His death can be in the true sense a sacrifice 
to God. 

(4) This offering is made under such spiritual conditions 
as lay upon Him the burden of human sin. The twofold fact 
of His union with mankind in nature and in sympathy and of 
His distinction from mankind in His sinlessness make His death 
at once the assumption and the putting away of the sin of the 
world. He bears it in repudiating it. He receives upon His 
head its consequences, while declaring the eternal an- 
tagonism of God to it, and the true life of man as overcoming 
it. All this seems to be involved in the act itself when 
closely studied. 

Hence follows of necessity the unique and eternal signifi- 
cance of His atoning act. The self-oblation of Christ is in 
very deed a sacrifice on behalf of mankind made once for all. 
It cannot be repeated, nor can it be added to. All that 
remains possible is that men should so identify themselves 
by faith with it, that its spiritual and moral principles should 
be reproduced in them. This is what is meant by the saying 
of St. Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ." The spirit 
of His sacrifice was the negation of sin — of its alienation from 
God, and its selfishness, its unbelief and worldliness, its 
sense-bound limitations. It was the affirmation of right- 
eousness and of the divine law by active submission to them. 
That act of submission marked the final realization in and 
through suffering of blessedness in God. Only by the death 
of Christ could this supreme result be attained. The New 
Testament everywhere lays peculiar emphasis upon the death 
of Christ as the consummation of His work. Yet whenever 
any of the writers explain what constituted the worth of His 
sacrifice they find it in the completed obedience by which 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 461 

in and through death Christ offered Himself without spot 
to God. 

Hence the perfect sacrifice is the complete satisfaction offered 
to God for the sin of the world. This does not involve any 
of the crude interpretations which have sometimes been given 
to it. It was not a mechanical arrangement rendering 
necessary a human crime in order to its accomplishment. 
Nor did it bring about any change in the mind of God 
towards the human race, taking place at the moment of 
its completion. To attribute such a change of mind to 
God involves an irrational extension to Him of human 
analogies, and is in addition contrary to the whole spirit of 
the ]^ew Testament, which represents Christ as the gift of God 
to men, and His death as the final manifestation of the mercy 
and grace of God. 

The source of all God's dealings with mankind is in His love. 
When other attributes or affections are ascribed to Him, such, 
for instance, as righteousness, justice, wrath against sin, these 
cannot be treated either as being independent of His love, or 
as a succession of separate and in themselves discordant 
affections and attitudes of spirit arising in a time-series. The 
total effect of the Scripture representation is to show that the 
love of God is the one underlying and determinative principle 
of His action towards men. They are the objects of that 
love as destined to realize the ends of holiness which sin 
sets aside. God's anger is therefore towards sin, and towards 
them as sinners, while His love is unchanging towards them as 
being, despite their sin, the ends of His purposes of grace 
and righteousness. 

Thus so far as human thought is adequate to set forth this 
reality there is a double attitude of God towards men, according 
as their relation to the eternal purpose of God is regarded. 
Hence the attitude of God towards the sacrifice of Christ. His 
sacrifice is the complete fulfillment of all righteousness, and is 
the setting aside by one supreme act of the sin which is the 
object of the wrath of God. In this twofold aspect the death of 
Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and is 
the indispensable means by which the redemptive grace of God 
goes forth for ever to mankind. 



I 



462 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

These general conclusions result from consideration of 
what is essentially involved in the spiritual and moral 
meaning of the death of Christ, and are not artificially 
brought to the subject by a priori conceptions or abstract 
doctrines of the relationship of God to men. Many of the 
mistakes into which doctrines of the Atonement have fallen 
have been due to the fact that men have spent their in- 
genuity in answering why His death must take place, rather 
than in patient investigation of what His death immediately 
and really involves. The relations of God to men have been 
conceived, under the influence of governmental and judicial 
associations, as purely external. The death of Christ then 
became a mere expedient to satisfy the need of these relation- 
ships. The theory of its effect that resulted, separated it 
from the spiritual experience and processes of human life. 
Thereby there was set up an explanation of its meaning, 
which, while presenting grave intellectual and moral difficul- 
ties, failed adequately to explain its vital relations to the 
continuous spiritual life of humanity. All such unsatisfactory 
and arbitrary explanations are done away when the death of 
Christ is seen in its relation to His life and spirit, and when His 
work as a whole is seen in the light of the relations to God as 
His Father, and to mankind as His brethren, though sinners, 
from which it proceeded. Hence, the death of Christ, which, 
in its spiritual meaning, is the supreme satisfaction offered to 
the fatherly heart of God for, and in a sense by, mankind, is 
also the supreme gift of God Himself to men. It is a 
redemptive act, in which the vicarious obedience and suffering 
exemplified in all the noblest service of men for mankind are 
immeasurably transcended. 

From whatever point of view, therefore, the death of 
Christ is contemplated, its unique significance stands out. 
It is the consummation of His life, its highest act, its com- 
plete expression to God, and, by the very fact of the spiritual 
relationship of Christ to mankind, it is a unique offering 
on behalf of mankind represented by Him. Hence, its atoning 
worth is due to its spiritual meaning. While it transcends 
human life, it fulfills its meaning and represents its return 
to God from the alienation of sin. Thus, the historical act 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 463 

passes into the spiritual experience of mankind as the means of 
a perfectly reconciling and sanctifying influence. The whole 
office of the Spirit in man is to take of the things of Christ and 
show them to believers. 

3. The redemptive work of Christ issues in the life of 
the Spirit, with its quickening energy and its moral power. 
This energy and power, however, cannot be detached from 
the complex whole, in and through which they become 
manifest. The life of the Spirit, as presented to us in the 
!N'ew Testament, means the steady realization of personal 
relationship to God in Christ. It is the apprehension by the 
spiritual vision and by trustful faith of "the truth as truth is 
in Jesus.^' It uses the whole of His historic work as the 
instrument and vehicle of its influence. It represents, indeed, 
the transference of Christ to the spiritual life of men. His 
mind is reproduced in His followers as the result of their 
spiritual fellowship with Him. Hence, the life of the Spirit 
is variously described as the indwelling of Christ, as the 
coming to the knowledge of the truth, as a victory over the 
flesh, or as the entrance into the full enjoyment of the filial 
life. It is only as the power of the Spirit is seen in its con- 
nection with all these sources of influence upon the human 
mind and heart that it becomes intelligible to us. As thus con- 
ditioned it becomes, not an arbitrary miracle, even though it 
be of grace, taking place at a particular moment of human 
history and in regard to a few chosen individuals, but it is 
seen to be an ordered stage in the dealing of God with men, 
a part of the texture woven of all the influences of revelation, 
inspiration, and fulfillment, by which the spiritual ends of God 
are realized in man. 

Yet while the life of the Spirit cannot be understood 
apart from its connection with the historic Christ and with 
the truth and grace revealed in Him, while it takes its place 
in the ordered fulfillment of the spiritual ends of Grod, yet it 
represents a characteristic dynamic. The experience of the 
Spirit is above all that of a power coming to and manifest in 
human life. Yet even here, unique as the experience is, it is 
not so unrelated to the general phenomena of spiritual life as 
to involve a breach with or a contradiction of laws and forces 



464 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

which operate throughout the inner experience of men. Its 
transforming power is due to the fulfillment of the hitherto 
latent ideal in man. That ideal, hitherto neglected, con- 
tradicted, or but fitfully pursued, becomes under the influence 
of Christ the object of supreme desire, the possession realized 
by a trustful affirmation. In proportion as that affirmation 
is instant and decisive the phenomena which accompany it 
are those of sudden conversion, due to the spiritual energies 
breaking forth from regions far below the sphere of ordinary 
consciousness. It is in the power of Christ to unlock the 
chambers of the spirit in which those forces are confined, and 
to remove the manifold obstructions which the selfishness and 
secularity of sin oppose to their working, that the personal 
application of His redemptive work consists. This result is 
brought about by the conviction of sin — the awakening of 
the conscience to its presence, the acknowledgment of respon- 
sibility for its existence, and a sense of the unutterable 
burden of its persistence. The consciousness of sin, therefore, 
is a vital factor of redemption from it. On the other hand, 
there is revealed the mercy of God which forgives sin, sets 
it aside, and treats us as though it had not been. Each 
of these is brought home to us by Christ, His work, and 
His Spirit. 

And within these are contained the power of a joyful 
emancipation, the entrance into living fellowship with God as 
His son, a new spiritual energy manifesting itself in the 
growing ease with which the moral tasks of life are discharged. 
Thus, throughout, the Christian consciousness stands in the 
closest relationship to the laws by which the spiritual nature 
of man is governed. It is transcendent, yet it gives full 
effect to that which is imn;anent in human nature as such. 
It can come to this fulfillment only so far as the perfect reve- 
lation of divine truth in Christ is presented to the spirit and 
is appropriated by faith. Every transformation, therefore, 
wrought by the new apprehension of truth or by the influence 
of goodness everywhere is an illustration of the means by 
which Christ's work of reconciliation and redemption is 
wrought out, and exhibits effects which are analogous to it. 
It, however, surpasses all these and stands out apart because 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 465 

it brings to bear the influence of the supreme truth and goodness 
in such wise as to secure the entire renewal and transformation 
of the spiritual life by restoring the divine relationship as the 
source and end of all besides. 

Thus, throughout, the Christian life is the spiritual life 
raised to its highest power and manifested in its com- 
pletest expression. This is effected under the influence of 
the transcendent, yet human, personality of Christ. The 
redemptive power of Christ and of His work is due to 
the unique relation in which He stands to God, and to the 
spiritual life and history of mankind. Carefully considered, 
the one carries with it the other as its consequence. The 
unique relation in which Christ stands to God does not with- 
draw Him from relations of vital intimacy with the life of 
man. On the contrary. His divinity involves and becomes 
manifest in those relations. To show that ultimately His life 
will be transferred to and reproduced in mankind is neither 
to reduce Him to the level of mankind nor to exalt mankind 
to His unique position. On the contrary, the fact that He has 
the power by means of His personality, His sufferings and 
His influence to affect the universal life of man in so unique 
a way, and to bring about such complete spiritual redemption 
from the power of evil, is the sign that He represents in 
history not merely the immanence, but also the transcendence 
of God. If the immanence be suggested by the response 
which the spiritual nature of man makes to His truth and 
grace, not less is the transcendence suggested by His unique 
power to evoke that response. Thus considered, the naturalness 
of our Lord^s influence, understood in the sense that it exhibits 
the highest working of universal spiritual laws, is not the nega- 
tion of His unique relationship to God but its affirmation. He 
is in His human manifestation — if the illustration may be 
allowed — the force-point of all the spiritual energy of God in a 
way which, while it identifies Him with the life of man, 
distinguishes Him from it. 

If the foregoing account of the relation of Christ's influence 
to that of truth and goodness generally be correct, it is not 
remarkable that we should find in Him and in His work the 
fulfillment of truths and principles which are shadowed forth 



4G6 THE CHRISTIAl^ RELIGION 

throughout the whole sphere of religion. The history of 
religion is full of stories of incarnation, of the practices of 
sacrifice and expiation, and of conceptions of sacramental 
nourishment and incorporation. From the theological as 
well as from the anthropological standpoint, it is of the 
greatest importance to trace the ideals and principles which 
underlie these conceptions and practices. Many of them 
reveal a groping after, and a partially successful endeavor to 
express, truths and principles which have their final manifesta- 
tion in the life and death of Christ, and in the relationship of 
believers to Him. This again should heighten instead of 
lowering our estimate of the unique character of His per- 
son and work. Christ could have no redemptive influence upon 
the life of men if His work did not possess this spiritual 
affinity with the noblest spiritual intuitions and endeavors of 
mankind. Part of the doctrine of the unique glory of His 
person is that He stands in such inward relations to the whole 
spiritual life of man, that its history — so far as it is one of 
progress — is that of preparation for Him, due to His own secret 
inspiration. 

But a fatal mistake is made when this fact is interpreted 
to mean that what is found by us in the work of Christ is 
merely projected into it by our imagination, instead of sub- 
sisting in it as an abiding fact. On the contrary, it is there 
in order that it may be found by us. If this were not so, the 
supreme manifestation of truth and grace would be in the 
apostolic interpreters of Christ, and not in Christ Himself. 
The active and formative forces of religion would be exerted 
in and through them in order to impose upon His doings and 
sufferings a meaning that is not really there. The Apostles, 
and not Christ, would be the creators of Christianity. There 
are those who do not shrink from this position, but it is re- 
pudiated by every one of these supposed creators. Doubtless the 
fact of Christ and the vision of its meaning are inseparably 
related. Only minds steeped in the influence and associations 
of religion could interpret the meaning of the supreme re- 
ligious Personality of history. On the other hand, their work is 
but to offer a description and explanation, not merely of the 
outward events of a particular life, but of the spiritual effect 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 467 

of these events as transmuted by Christ, till they become 
charged with His otsti spiritual power for those who come under 
their influence. The ultimate choice must be made between 
reducing Christ to a lay figure or symbol, which is intrinsi- 
cally absurd, or beholding in Him with John the "glory 
as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth." 

V. It is further objected in many quarters that the ultimate 
prospects held out by the Christian religion are not only 
unverifiable, but that they are on physical grounds at least 
highly improbable, and judged by higher standards, excessive 
and artificial. The prospects of final blessedness, which are 
associated with the conception of heaven, are represented as 
standing in no vital relationship to the spiritual life of men, 
and as brought about, according to the Christian doctrine, by 
purely external and miraculous agency. The growth of the 
conception of heaven, it is contended, can be naturalistically 
explained by the study of animism. The whole expectation of 
a future life is based upon the excessive estimate of the im- 
portance of man in the universe from which it is the office of 
science gradually to emancipate the human race. The same 
arguments are of course applied in opposition to any doctrine 
of future punishment, with the addition of the twofold objection 
that, if there be a God, such punishment is contrary to His 
benevolence, and that the nature of sin, even if its existence be 
admitted, is not so serious as to call for such punishment. This 
general point of view calls for consideration, although within 
our space it is impossible to deal fully with the questions 
involved in the future life. 

It is necessary to begin with the admission that however 
clear may be the revelation, or strong the expectation of a 
future life, it is impossible for men adequately to realize 
beforehand its nature. To realize it is to experience it, and 
not even revelation can work such a miracle as to enable us 
to experience the future life while belonging to this. Hence 
all forecasts of heaven must be poetic in their character, 
understanding that term in its highest sense. They must 
visualize a picture to the imagination, which, even if it be 
true, must be inadequate, and the truth of which must be 



468 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

measured not by its literal accuracy but by the satisfaction and 
explanation which that which is essential in its ideal affords to 
the spiritual powers and needs of human nature as we know it in 
this world. 

Before judging the doctrine, therefore, it is necessary clearly 
to realize what is contained in the poetic presentation of it, and 
to look beyond the comparatively accidental forms in which it 
is necessarily portrayed to its underlying spiritual significance. 
Popular religion has increased the difficulty of carrying out 
this requirement by the naive way in which it has improved 
upon the more authoritative descriptions of heaven, and frankly 
appealed to men's hopes and fears by representations of a 
future state which carry over into it without any criticism the 
ordinary conditions of the present, subject to such improve- 
ment as men would desire, in order to remove the various short- 
comings and hindrances which the present world presents to 
the highest blessedness or even to the ordinary enjoyment of 
existence. Yet even in regard to these crudest representa- 
tions, it were well worth investigation whether the confident 
assurances with which they are set forth and accepted by great 
multitudes^ does not suggest an inner reasonableness about 
them which should prevent them from being lightly dismissed. 
The question, in short, is whether the faith which attends 
their imaginative presentment does not verify what is essential 
to them. How is it that, though we dismiss our ordinary 
dreams of blessedness on awaking, this one great dream, ab- 
solutely unverifiable, it is contended, and in the ordinary sense 
of the term obviously unverifiable, has fastened itself upon the 
spiritual life of the human race as one of the most essential of 
its convictions? 

Excluding for the moment all reference to future punish- 
ment, the New Testament doctrine of the completion of 
salvation in Christ involves three things. Firstly, individual 
immortality; secondly, a perfected community; and thirdly, 
a reconstructed world. The first of these may be treated as 
the governing assumption, the second as the ideal presented 
to hope, and the third as the essential concomitant of that 
ideal. The basis of the whole doctrine lies in the belief in 
individual immortality. As to this, it may be confidently 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 469 

laid down that if the conditions governing our present life are 
to be maintained, this belief must be in the main a deliverance 
of faith; the real question being whether such a deliverance 
does not contain within itself an immanent reason which 
makes it truly prophetic of its fulfillment. It is admitted on 
all hands by careful thinkers that Natural Science can neither 
prove nor disprove the doctrine of immortality. Despite the 
efforts of the Psychical Research Society, it is difficult to see 
how it ever can, even supposing that the investigation into 
alleged apparitions were to yield more satisfactory results 
than has hitherto been the case. Supposing that verifiable 
apparitions were greatly multiplied, and that the efforts 
to establish communication with the unseen world were more 
clearly and generally successful than has hitherto been the 
case, all this would leave the matter substantially where it 
stands at present. It is hard to see how it would be possible so 
convincingly to establish the desired explanation of all these 
phenomena that they would be incapable of another interpre- 
tation according to the bias of the inquirer. They would be 
relied upon rather as supports to a faith already existent or 
as strengthening a hope previously active, than as sufficient 
evidence, apart from what is involved in such an antecedent 
attitude of mind. 

Just as science is here almost helpless, so the old meta- 
physical arguments in favor of a future life are now entirely 
discredited. No one would now argue for immortality on the 
ground that the soul is a simple, indivisible, and therefore 
indestructible entity. It is clear that all such arguments 
represent an unjustifiable transference to the spiritual realm 
of conditions which possibly — but only possibly — govern the 
physical. 

Any fruitful consideration of the subject must start from 
the standpoint of human expectation which has hitherto 
been practically universal. That expectation must be judged 
in its bearings upon the spiritual evolution of mankind, as 
a factor in producing it, and as indispensable, taking humanity 
as a whole, to maintaining it. It must be estimated on the 
assumption, freely made in regard to material phenomena, 
that the world is rational, and that the factors which are 



470 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 

vital not merely to its physical production, but to its spiritual 
progress, are thereby shown to partake of the rationality, and, 
therefore, of the truth, of the universe as a whole. 

The spiritual and moral implicates of the belief must 
therefore be the principal justification of its existence and 
the verification of its truth. Speaking broadly, it may be 
contended that the demand of a future life varies ac- 
cording to the moral worth of men. It is true that some men 
of noble character, having convinced themselves on physical 
grounds that the hope is untenable, have found themselves 
able to renounce it, and have even represented such renuncia- 
tion as a nobler temper than that which seeks for continued 
personal existence. But they have substituted for the belief 
in their own personal immortality the conception of an 
idealized humanity, towards the production of which their 
hopes and efforts are going, and in which they reach an 
ideal immortality from which all selfish elements have been 
purged. The social affinities in man^s constitution so qualify 
that which is merely individual that such a conception of- 
consummated humanity involves half of the doctrine of 
immortality. A selfish individualism in such belief mis- 
represents its true spiritual import. On the other hand, the 
conception of a consummated humanity must needs undergo 
a further criticism. It is useless to substitute a faith in its 
possibility for the belief in personal immortality, if it should 
be found on closer investigation that the only hope of a 
consummated humanity, in a sense which would make the 
universe reasonable, depends upon the personal immortality 
of those who compose humanity as a whole. To reach the 
ideal consummation of mankind only for it to be swept away 
in one ruthless moment by an unconscious and remorseless 
universe would not establish, but, on the contrary, absolutely 
contradict, the rationality of the hope which labored for 
its accomplishment. Here, again, the fatal division between 
the spiritual life and reality, which is what we mean, or 
ought to mean, by the irrational, would be clearly marked, 
as it is in the case in regard to all deviations from the Christian 
interpretation of the world. Death as extinction reduces 
the universe to imbecility. To suppose it involves utter 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 471 

contradiction between the estimates of value, which are the 
formative influences of spiritual life and therefore in the 
highest sense natural, on the one hand, and the historic 
event both in regard to individuals and to humanity on the 
other. The end of life would contradict the whole meaning 
of the process. If we could evade this conclusion in regard 
to individual life we should be driven to it by contemplating 
the future of humanity. The latter contradiction would be 
indefinitely delayed, but according to all physical forecasts it 
would be none the less sure. The spiritual life which proclaims 
itself to have unique worth, and which can only develop its 
possibilities by the affirmation of permanence for itself, or at 
least for its endeavors, would be but an episode in the life of 
the universe. Thus spiritual and moral treasures would be 
surrendered at the demand of the mere brute forces of the 
universe. To endow ether with immortality, and to doom man, 
individual or collective, to extinction, in consequence of the 
physical limitations of ether and its combinations, would be 
indeed to treat the scaffolding as of more importance than the 
building, and to reduce the whole story of the universe to a 
meaningless and cruel absurdity. 

If these considerations have force, they point to a still 
more important conclusion. Whatever forecast we can ar- 
rive at as to the nature of a future life must be based upon 
the testimony of personality. If the worth of personality and 
its place in the universe as we know it, makes it im- 
possible for us to acquiesce in its annihilation, the same 
reason forbids us to accept any conception of future existence 
which annuls its essential characteristics. The possession of 
personality is the distinctive characteristic of human life. It 
is not perfectly attained whUe the process of development and 
education is incomplete. The moral task of life is to secure a 
morally ordered advance to its complete fulfillment. According 
as personality becomes more distinctively marked and more 
completely fulfilled, is it possible for its possessor to enter into 
fellowship with God and with his fellow men. Communion 
with God varies directly as the strength and many-sidedness 
of personality. Such is the history of the spiritual progress 
of individual men as we know it in the present life. Such 



472 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

also is its importance for that spiritual fellowship in which 
the highest blessedness consists. No clue to the future can be 
found except within human nature itself. Hence no forecast 
can be deemed trustworthy which contradicts either the 
inherent conditions or the course of development which are 
distinctive of personal life as we know it. There are those 
who bid us look forward to immortality as offering an escape 
from our finitude and an entrance into the infinity of God. 
Such teaching is only a modern variant of the mystic dreams 
of eternal absorption in the divine nature. Such a future, if 
it involve the loss of personal consciousness, cannot, so far as 
men themselves are concerned, be distinguished from annihila- 
tion. It is true that according to the conception the superseding 
of individual existence by an infinite mode of being may, in 
some way passing our understanding, add the attainments of 
earthly life to the infinite riches of the Divine Being. In a 
similar way, when a meteorite falls back into the sun, it 
restores to the central body the heat which it has possessed. 
Yet while the sun may be infinitesimally enriched, the meteorite 
itself has ceased to exist. If this be so, the ultimate perfection 
which involves the extinction of personal consciousness would 
be the fulfillment of the divine at the expense of the human. 
Yet even this is a concession which cannot finally be made. 
The spiritual perfection of God would not be enriched by any 
such transformation of spiritual beings as secured their infini- 
tude at the cost of their personality. Such a process would 
indeed mean that God is the One and All of the universe. 
But all that which constitutes the spiritual and moral perfection 
of His being would pass away. His love. His righteousness, 
and all the other attributes which men have regarded as being 
worshipful in Him, would be transformed out of existence. 
Por these depend upon the existence of a world of personalities 
standing in relationships to God, which are set up and 
maintained by Him owing to the spiritual and moral qualities 
of His nature. With the passing of such personalities the 
manifestation of those spiritual and moral qualities will all 
pass away. Moreover, that this process should represent the 
law of the universe would prove that these divine qualities 
were no essential and eternal part of the divine perfection. 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 473 

Thus, just as such a consummation would destroy the perfection 
of man, so with this destruction would pass away the perfection 
of God. The whole history of His dealings with the universe 
and with mankind would be reduced to mere natural necessity 
under whatever terms that necessity may be glorified. The God 
who ceases to be the object of an eternal fellowship ceases to be 
thereby the object of worship in the best sense which has hitherto 
been attached to that term. 

No doubt the finitude of man as a growing personality stands 
in vital connection with the sense of infinity lying around and 
beyond. The fact that he seeks spiritual development empha- 
sizes alike the fact of limitation and the necessity of passing 
beyond it. All growth involves both of these. Further, the 
expansiveness of human nature and the weariness which is often 
involved in the present conditions of earthly life make it pleasant 
in some moods to contemplate the entire surrender of the 
individuality which involves finitude even at the cost of personal 
consciousness itself. 

Yet all this represents but a phase of thought or a mood 
of spirit. Neither the one nor the other entitles us to think 
ourselves away, or to suppose that blessedness consists in so 
doing. We are the less entitled to do so when we reflect that 
the whole spiritual constitution of the universe depends upon 
the maintenance within it alike of the personality of God 
and of the personality of man. To remain a personal object 
of the divine love brings greater glory to God than to become 
an eternal mode of the divine Being. All such interpre- 
tations of the doctrine of immortality, therefore, whether they 
spring from abstract speculation or from mystic yearning, 
involve contradictions directly they are closely examined. 
They contemplate the perfection of personality as consisting 
in its loss. They confuse communion with an absorption 
which, in destroying the ultimate possibility of communion, is 
an effective denial of the present reality of it. They set up 
an abstract spiritual end, which for its fulfillment depends 
upon the perfecting of personality, as a substitute for that 
perfecting. 

It is a mistake to regard the distinction of personality as 
involving exclusiveness. Personality is the condition of 



474 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

fellowship. From beginning to end there is a parallel growth 
of personality and fellowship. Selfishness is the contradiction 
of true personality. The expectation of the future, therefore, 
must look, not to the suppression of human personality, 
which is essential to the highest glory alike of God and man, but 
to the purging of it from that selfishness which hardens indi- 
viduality into exclusiveness, and thereby makes it in very deed 
the foe of personality. 

What is all this but to say once more that the filial 
consciousness is the supreme guide to the meaning of life not 
merely in the present, but also throughout the future? The 
sonship of man means above all that he exists as a true, 
and it may now be added as an eternal, end to God. This was 
the central affirmation from which the whole revelation of 
the Father given by Christ proceeded. This was the truth 
which the spiritual perfection of Christ enabled Him so 
completely to realize, that it became the determining principle 
of all His thoughts, purposes, and actions. And that which 
secured Him in the consciousness of eternal blessedness He 
extends to His followers. "God is not the God of the 
dead, but of the living: for unto Him all live." This was the 
decisive utterance of the truth upon which the whole fabric 
of Christian hope is reared. It is a living assurance, not a 
mere speculation. But round it gather all other intimations 
of immortality. Self-affirmation, reason, love, ideal hopes and 
efforts, the abiding yearning after fellowship with God — all 
these grow out of the filial consciousness, and all make human 
life a reality which transcends the limiting conditions of this 
world. The assurance given to this consciousness in its 
fullness lies in the Fatherhood of God. This revelation of 
His relationship to men is of all things most misleading, 
unless the hope of the future life is conveyed by it. And of 
the truth of all this the Eesurrection of Christ stands as the 
proclamation. 

Directly the true emphasis in regard to immortality is laid 
on personality, the moral implicates of the expectation assume 
due prominence. The old view which represented this as a 
state of probation, and a future state as one of rewards and 
punishments, receives substantial justification. And in so far 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 475 

as the conception is transformed by recent thought, it is because 
we no longer look upon such rewards and punishments as being 
due to merely external action, but regard them as the complete 
working out of moral distinctions in a universe where the holiness 
of God is supreme, and where at the same time the personality 
of man remains free. To pursue this line of thought, however, 
would carry us beyond the limits of our present inquiry into the 
detailed discussion of eschatology. 

The assumption of individual immortality, and the expecta- 
tion of that future blessedness which on every ground is postu- 
lated by the filial consciousness, involves the realization of a 
perfect community. The perfect blessedness of the individual 
is unthinkable, except as being realized in and through a perfect 
community. If fellowship be essential to personal well-being in 
this world, a fortiori it must be essential to final blessed- 
ness in a future state. The two elements, the personal and 
the collective, stand or fall together. So far as the New 
Testament is concerned, it would be truer to say that the col- 
lective overshadows the individual in its doctrine of heaven 
than the other way. That is to say, the ultimate prospect set 
before us is that of a city, with its ideal fellowship, into which 
every individual believer hopes and strives to enter. In this 
respect also the doctrine of heaven projects into the future the 
complete realization of all that is involved in the present filial 
consciousness. 

Finally, the perfection either of the community or of the 
individual in a future state is unthinkable without the essential 
accompaniment of a reconstructed world. Both the Old and 
the New Testament, therefore, give abundant expression to 
this ultimate promise and expectation. Neither, however, 
reveals to us the means or processes by which this transforma- 
tion will take place. It is the act of God, but the conditions 
under which this act will be accomplished, and the energies 
of which it will make use, are not revealed. Nor could it be 
otherwise. They can only be revealed as they are experienced, 
and to experience them would involve passage by means 
of them into the perfect world which they are to bring about. 
Yet the filial consciousness becomes the vehicle of such reve- 
lation as is at present possible. The transformation to be 



476 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

effected must be that of this present order of things, for 
continuity of experience is essential if personality is to be 
maintained. The breach between the present and the future 
brought about by death and by any subsequent event cannot 
be so absolute as to obliterate memory, or to destroy spiritual 
aptitudes which have been disciplined in the present life. 
This were to destroy personality altogether. Hence, however 
strongly marked may be the transitions of experience, or even 
catastrophic the objective changes brought about, the principle 
of continuity must prevail. This is the Christian doctrine, 
and again it will be seen to rest upon the fundamental in- 
tuitions of the filial consciousness. The 'lioV of this change 
remains at present inexplicable. We may be sure, however, 
that the conditions of it are spiritual. Can we be sure, for 
example, at the present moment, that the imperfections of 
the present world are really due to its materiality? May it 
not equally be that powers in us lie dormant or are blighted, 
which, if they could be called into full exercise, would so 
transform our relationship to the existing world that what is 
now experienced as evil would be transformed into good? "We 
have limited experience of such transformations owing to the 
growth of spiritual, moral, or intellectual power, even at 
present. 

Much of the evil which prevails is due to the inadequate 
development of personality. With the growth of personality 
many influences of environment which are hostile to it in its 
weakness become favorable to it in its strength. In short, 
the world is within certain limits reconstructed by spiritual 
growth or transformation. Nor is it easy to set limits to this 
process, especially when the Gospel narratives reveal to us, 
prevailingly in the case of our Lord, and sometimes in the 
case of His followers, a triumphant power to rise superior to 
limiting conditions and even to transform them for the 
purposes of spiritual life or in the service of humanity. Thus 
the transformation of the universe requisite to the complete 
fulfillment of the ideal contained in the Christian consciousness 
may be brought about by an enlarged range or an increased 
intensity of the spiritual nature which brings us into rela- 
tionship with the world as it now is. If this be the case, the 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 477 

sense of dissatisfaction with the present order of things rising 
to the condemnation of it is indeed the incipient manifestation 
of the spiritual power by which its imperfection will be 
transcended or done away. It is quite impossible in con- 
formity with any spiritual principles of interpretation to 
imagine a future and perfect order of things externally fitted 
on to a perfected community, even by divine power. Such 
mechanical notions, while they may pass muster for popular 
purposes, will not bear reasoned criticism. The power to 
pierce beneath such external conceptions is the only means by 
which justice can be done to the essential truth which is con- 
tained in them. When this is done the promise of new heavens 
and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness becomes not 
only thinkable, but is clearly foreshadowed and guaranteed in 
the new relationship to the world which is brought about by 
every uplifting and enlargement of consciousness, and es- 
pecially when such progress is completely dominated and 
inspired by the filial life of those who enter into the complete 
emancipation of the sons of God. It is impossible and needless 
here to discuss all that is involved in the Christian doctrine of 
the future life. Sufiicient has, however, been said to show 
how its various elements stand related to the filial consciousness, 
and how the filial consciousness itself is the guarantee of their 
essential truth. 

YI. Finally, the objection has been raised that the Christian 
faith is not universal. It has only become known partially 
and gradually. Its complete conquest of the world appears 
at present to be problematic. Even where it has become 
established as the dominant faith there is much opposition 
to it, and there are many differing interpretations of it. These 
difficulties pressed more heavily upon the mind in the old 
days, when the processes both of creation and of revelation 
were represented under more mechanical conceptions than is 
the case in the present day. We are so accustomed to consider 
the most precious treasures of life as the result of a long and 
costly, and even of a precarious, development, that it does not 
appear strange that the greatest spiritual treasure of all should 
be conferred as the result of a similar process. Moreover, the 
old view of revelation, which treated it as presented above 



478 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

all to the intellectual faculties, has been superseded by a view 
which does fuller justice to the spiritual and moral elements 
involved. Even in respect of the intellect we have reached a 
new point of view. Intellectual development conditions on 
every hand intellectual receptivity. The capacity, therefore, 
to receive truth, although it is divinely conveyed, is dependent 
upon the human as well as upon the divine factor in the 
process. But directly the spiritual and moral aspects of the 
matter are taken into account this becomes even clearer. If 
the revelation of God be on the one side a gracious act of God, 
it involves also a spiritual and moral victory on the part of 
man. The history of the higher progress of mankind is that 
of a march towards an ideal goal, which can only be reached 
as the result of inward fidelity and strenuous effort. Moreover, 
the ideal satisfaction of the spirit in God is so comprehensive 
as to require for its complete realization the play of the many- 
sided but limited individualities by whose action the attain- 
ment of a comprehensive vision and a completely realized 
ethical life is gradually brought about. Hence it is not re- 
markable, under the conditions laid down, that the knowledge 
of the Christian faith and, still more, the adequate realization 
of its meaning, should be, not the lightly accomplished result 
of miraculous influence, but the consummation of the divinely 
ordered aspiration and effort of mankind. Unless this be so, 
the knowledge of Christ would cease to be spiritual in any real 
sense of the term. 

There are, of course, two assumptions involved in this 
conclusion. In the first place, that all knowledge of God 
must result from an historic process. But, as has been pointed 
out, this is the only assumption which we are entitled to 
make. It is involved in the very nature of spiritual and 
moral personality as we know it in mankind. It is abso- 
lutely universal. Eevelation and religion must, if they enter 
into the life and reality of the present order of things, conform 
to its governing conditions. If they did not, two clashing 
orders would unite in man, reducing him and all things with 
him to confusion. The transcendence of revelation must not 
be incompatible with a universal order. Redemption must be 
by way of the spiritual and moral laws which govern individual 



MAN AND REDEMPTION 479 

and collective progress, and not despite them. Of course, the 
question may always be asked why a history at all, and 
especially, why a history which means not merely a succession 
of events or an ordered development, but a process which in- 
volves struggle, delay, and contingent defeat here or there. To 
that question we are not qualified to give an absolute ans5wer. 
We are in large measure the creatures of this process. We can, 
however, perceive the infinite possibilities of moral growth by 
conflict. Any other alternative which we can present to the 
imagination will be pronounced by rational criticism to be less 
worthy than that which has been actually set up. 

In the next place it must be assumed, if our contention is to 
hold good, that some measure of truth and worth is present in 
all religious life. Inadequate and contradictory as it may be, 
degraded as it may have become, there are to be detected beneath 
its surface the workings of higher influence, though in many 
cases on the most restricted scale. Hence, when the ultimate 
spiritual end is reached, all peoples will in some measure, how- 
ever humble, contribute to its perfection. Unless this be so, no 
way can be found of justifying the dealings of God with men as 
consistent alike with righteousness and love. 

Finally, such justification can only be made good if the 
process which is taking place in this world be treated as only 
the initial stage of a spiritual history to be carried on in realms 
beyond the present world. This, however, is a truth essential 
alike to revelation and religion. Christianity reveals the mean- 
ing of the world. It does so by being the consummation of, 
and at the same time in consonance with, the spiritual and 
moral order of the world. It postulates not only time, but 
eternit}^ for its perfect work; not only things present, but 
things to come. When all this is recognized, it does not, 
indeed, remove all difficulties. It is hard to conceive how this 
can ever be the case, but it immeasurably relieves them, and it 
relieves them just at the decisive point, namely, by showing 
that on no other plan could the knowledge and service of God 
be the reward of a victory by which the spiritual stature of 
the sons of God is attained. Thus the Christian doctrine of 
Man and Eedemption is throughout explained by the fatherly- 
filial relation. 



CHAPTER VI 

TEE DOCTRINE OF GOD 

THE previous inquiry has revealed the spiritual factors 
which are involved in the making of theology, and 
the ideal satisfaction given to all these factors by 
Christianity. It has become clear that if the world is to be 
explained at all, it can only be by means of Christian Theism. 
It is also clear that Christian Theism has resulted from the 
consciousness of a spiritual dealing of God with mankind, 
which, while transcendent and including revelation, redemp- 
tion, and satisfaction, stands in the most vital relations to 
the whole development of the universe and of mankind. It 
remains to examine the belief in God upon its intellectual side, 
in order to discover the way in which its substance is arrived 
at, the nature and consistency of its content, and its validity 
for reason. 

The history of religion has shown us that all its forms 
have represented to those who have accepted them the result 
of revelation, understanding that term in its widest sense. 
In proportion as they have been truly religious, and not the 
philosophies of religion which follow upon its intuitive stages, 
they have represented influences which have been conceived 
as coming from without and from above by means of a 
direct presentation to the spiritual consciousness. Above 
all has this been the case in regard to the great historic 
religion which culminated in Christ, and in the dawn 
through His influence of the Christian consciousness. Its 
distinguishing feature is the immediacy of spiritual intui- 
tion, with the attribution of that intuition to God as its 
source. 

480 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 481 

At the same time, this revelation has been given within 
and by means of human consciousness. It has varied in its 
extent and richness directly as the development of spiritual 
consciousness. That consciousness has been related to the 
whole experience of life^ and conditioned by the world and 
history. Above all, revelation has come as the result of the 
intuitive experience of the unique personality of Jesus Christ. 
Hence religion presents to us the consciousness of a divine 
communication, which is at the same time served and con- 
ditioned by the nature and spiritual maturity of human 
self-consciousness as situated in the world, enriched by the 
lessons and influence of its history, and by the discipline of 
its events. 

Both these elements, namely, the consciousness of divine 
illumination and the processes of human self-realization, 
must be held together if any satisfactory account is to be 
given of the making and meaning, the worth and validity of 
the doctrine of God. In the first place, that doctrine is the 
reflective product of revelation. Unfolded as it may be by 
definition and argument, its source lies deeper than such 
logical processes of intelligence. It springs from a source 
of spiritual apprehension which, while it distinctly and 
markedly includes the intelligence, at least equally involves 
many elements which are not, strictly speaking, intellectual. 
The doctrine of God, therefore, is primarily not a deduction but 
a description — the attempt to set forth the nature and relation- 
ships of the Divine Being whose presence and character is pre- 
sented to and within spiritual consciousness. From all this it 
results that the so-called proofs of the existence of God are 
gradually accumulated, and are long subsequent to the belief 
in Him and even to the doctrine of Him. In any purely intel- 
lectual form they can only do partial justice to the variety and 
richness of the material from which the belief is drawn. Above 
all, they fall short of the manifold content of the Christian 
doctrine of God. 

It is this fact of the spiritual sources of theistic belief 
which accounts for the apparently unsatisfactory character of 
many of the so-called evidences of the existence of God, and 
notably of what is perhaps the greatest and most vitally 



482 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

important — the ontological argument; the argument, namely, 
that the thought of God as the Perfect Being involves His 
existence. As presented in its purely intellectual forms, it 
seems to depend upon arbitrary assumptions, or upon an 
abstract logic which resembles the superficial subtlety of a 
skillfully constructed puzzle. The reason of the union of this 
apparent weakness with real strength is that the argument 
in its purely logical form throws out of consideration those 
living intuitions of spiritual consciousness upon which its real 
force depends. So far as we can apprehend the Perfect Being 
of which the ontological argument speaks, we do so by a 
spiritual intuition which is deeper and broader than any 
supposed logical necessity. To throw out, therefore, history 
and experience for the sake of logic is to produce an argument 
which has convincing power rather in spite of than because 
of its logical cleverness, and which derives its cogency pre- 
cisely from those elements which have been studiously left out 
of account. Hence all true Christian theology, whether apolo- 
getic or dogmatic, should, if it is to be securely based, start 
with the primary facts and experience of spiritual conscious- 
ness as its datum. Its business is frankly to hold to, explicate 
and justify these primary facts of spiritual consciousness, and 
not to dispense with them. Theology has to show that the 
revelation given in these facts illuminates the world and is 
verified by its history. It has further to make good that the 
reflective doctrine which is drawn from this consciousness is 
logically coherent, stands in no contradiction to other ascer- 
tained truth, and is so derived as to possess rational validity. 
Careful examination will show how faulty, and, indeed, mis- 
leading, is the attempt to build up by mere argumentative 
processes an abstract doctrine of God in isolation from all those 
influences by which the belief in Him has been created and is 
sustained. 

The revelation of God which is thus given is not purely 
transcendent and external to the man who receives it. The 
very fact that in it and through it man comes to himself and 
to the position of heirship over, and harmony with, the world 
to which he belongs, shows that that which, on the one hand, 
must be conceived as a revelation from above, is, on the other, 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 483 

the intuitive deliverance of spiritual maturity. In this respect 
it is as truly natural as in the former it is supernatural. The 
union of these two aspects, while in a measure common to all sup- 
posed knowledge of God, is, above all, true in the case of Christ, 
where there is complete unity between the substance of the 
revelation given and the human Eevealer of it. In Hirn the 
substance and the authoritative witness of the revelation are 
absolutely one. This is His unique position. His conscious- 
ness is that of constant reception from, and dependence upon, 
the Pather, accompanied by complete spiritual lordship over 
truth, the world, and man. 

How are we to understand and hold together these two as- 
pects of the case — to understand the revelation of the tran- 
scendent Personality of God, who is not only transcendent but 
immanent throughout the whole range and the entire process of 
reality, and, above all, in the spiritual consciousness which 
apprehends Him? 

The abstract metaphysical objections to the possibility of 
revelation have to a large extent been already dealt with in 
the previous discussion concerning Agnosticism. It must 
above all be borne in mind that we are everjrwhere faced by 
the fact and the prevalence of the religious consciousness. That 
consciousness combines the sense of oneness with, and the 
sense of dependence upon, a Divine Source. The Infinite and 
the finite are thus locked together in a relationship which at 
once emphasizes and overcomes the distinction between the two. 
Both the distinction and the sublation of it are equally vital 
to the fully developed religious consciousness. They represent 
not successive but simultaneous, not incoherent but harmonious, 
factors of that consciousness. Both are alike present in the 
case of every distinctive activity of human personality. Under 
religious influence, reason, while conscious of its own worth and 
power, realizes that it is the expression of the universal 
Eeason which explains the world. Moral consciousness, with 
its sharp distinctions between right and wrong, finds the source 
of those distinctions and the authority which enforces the 
obligation to respect them, in the moral sovereignty of God. 
Spiritual aspiration finds in the perfection of God alike its 
source and its goal. 



484 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

Thus, for religion, the finite and the infinite represent the 
two poles everywhere held together by the distinctive energy 
of the spiritual consciousness. Further, spiritual experience 
finds not merely that the divine is given as the correlative of 
the human, but that the influence of the divine is throughout 
active and sovereign. The spiritual and moral condition of 
the religious man is constantly influenced and transformed 
from the depths of subliminal consciousness. It is in the 
sphere of that subliminal consciousness, when it is aroused, 
that men feel themselves under the immediate influence of the 
divine. It is from that which is thus given that the whole 
content of revelation, including the doctrine of God which is 
deduced from it, is derived. 

Is there any inner contradiction or inherent irrationality in 
this experience disallowing its claim to be heard? At first 
sight we should suppose that while it is impossible for finite 
beings to comprehend absolute perfection, it is not impossible 
for them to apprehend it. The possibility of such appre- 
hension is often obscured by treating the perfection of God as 
though it were quantitative instead of qualitative. Direct^ 
it is understood that the glory of God consists not in unlimited 
quantity, but in supreme perfection of quality, there would 
seem to be a power to apprehend Him like to that possessed 
by every inferior when brought into contact with the vastly 
superior, provided that the superior be of the same kind as 
the inferior. 

It may, however, be objected that in religious experience 
all that is given to us is a state of our own thoughts and 
feelings and desires, and that these carry no legitimate 
reference to any cause beyond themselves. Yet that objection 
would equally apply to all our perceptions, and, above all, to 
all our intercourse with human persons. Our percepts are all, 
in themselves, states of our own consciousness; though states 
which carry with them a natural and necessary testimony to 
a cause beyond ourselves. It is contended that exactly the 
same thing, neither more nor less, is the case with the most 
vital experiences of the spiritual consciousness. The only 
difference is that in the case of ordinary perception the cause 
is aflfirmed to be a particular object external to ourselves, 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 485 

while in case of the religious consciousness the cause is attributed 
to a divine source which is all-inclusive and in some sense 
immanent within ourselves. 

Yet this, when we come to reflect, is exactly what God must 
be, and we can therefore only invalidate the testimony of the 
spiritual consciousness on the assumption that only one form 
of approach to human consciousness is possible, and only one 
kind of relationship open to it, which must of necessity exclude 
the divine. But such a presumption is entirely without rational 
grounds, and depends not upon maturity of wisdom, but on 
barrenness of imagination. Hence the doctrine of God cannot 
be invalidated by any legitimate criticism of its sources. Its 
rationality must be determined by the examination of its con- 
tent, and of the process by which it is attained. 

It has already been seen that God is presented to us in the 
Christian revelation as our Father. The following elements 
are included in this conception of Him and of His relation to 
the world: His personality and spiritual perfection; His tran- 
scendence above the universe and immanence within it; His 
sovereignty for the sake of the highest ends of His own 
perfection, the supremacy in His character of love, and, owing 
to all this, the union within Himself of eternal self-realiza- 
tion and of the principle of external self-communication. 
All these elements are implicitly contained within the con- 
ception of God's Fatherhood. Each one can be made the subject 
of rational investigation, the result of which will, in confirming 
their validity for thought, reveal that the conception of Father- 
hood not only ministers to the highest spiritual life, but is the 
most adequate symbol for the expression of that which is 
essential in the divine nature, and in the relationship of God 
to the world. 

I. The Personality of God. — The revelation of God in 
spiritual consciousness is apprehended as a condescending 
self-manifestation, as the unfolding of character in the holy 
fellowship of religion, and as the fulfillment of a divine pur- 
pose which embraces alike the spiritual life of the individual 
and the course of the world as a whole. All these involve the 
personality of God. Reflection with a view to the expla- 
nation of the world yields in the first instance, as has been seen, 



486 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

the same result as is involved in the experience of redemption 
and in the spiritual consciousness of religion. The explanation 
of the world is only possible on the assumption of the priority 
of the spiritual. The spiritual embraces the governing thought 
and underlying purpose that constitute the world a rational 
whole in which the unfolding reason of man finds itself at home. 
Yet the spiritual, as the subject of creative thought and purpose, 
is only conceivable as conscious, and consciousness involves 
consciousness of self or personality. 

If the Source of the universe must be held to will and to 
compass ends, the character of which are fixed by His own 
nature, it must further be held that those ends are presented to 
Him in their entirety, and afford to Him satisfaction in their 
attainment. The only center to which such presentation and 
satisfaction are possible is personality. 

It has already been argued that personality is the highest 
reality in the created world, that, therefore, its creative source 
must possess in perfect degree that which He confers, and that 
every mark of purpose in the world is a sign that He actuall}'' 
possesses it. It may be added that the whole blessedness of 
religious experience consists in the apprehension of the divine 
personality, and in referring the gifts and experiences of 
life to God as consciously purposing and bestowing them. 
According, therefore, to the estimate held of the worth and 
effectiveness of human personality is the belief in the reality 
of the divine. 

But it is sometimes contended on philosophical grounds 
that the attribution of personality to God is illegitimate, and 
indeed irrational. It is held that the possession of person- 
ality arises in consequence of a twofold distinction, each part 
of which is essentially the mark of finitude, and therefore 
inapplicable to God. In the first place the self-distinguishing 
activity which is the mark of personality is bound up with 
the differentiation of the individual from the fellow indi- 
viduals by whom he is surrounded and limited in the world. 
In the next place personality is the result of the distinction 
between the individual and the material world to which he 
belongs. Indeed, personality is not an original and unchang- 
ing possession, but a growth, and its growth is conditioned 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 48T 

by conflict with the world which it distinguishes from itself. 
It is held, therefore, that personality is a principle of exclu- 
sion, bound up with finite existence as limited by other finite 
existences throughout the whole system of the universe, 
and for this cause inapplicable to the Divine Source of the 
universe who embraces all things in His own all-comprehending 
life. 

In opposition to this contention it must be held that even 
in man personality is a principle of inclusion rather than of 
exclusion. The power and range of personality is measured 
by the extent to which it appropriates the world by means 
of manifold relationships and extended experience. The life 
of the imbecile is exclusive, lacking the power to enter into 
the relationships by which a full human experience becomes 
possible. This exclusiveness, however, marks a fatal lack of 
personality and not its possession. Eeflection on this obvious 
fact suggests that it is possible to disentangle the conception 
of personality from that which is incidental to the limitations 
of finite personalities. After all, self-reference is the one 
essential of personal consciousness, as such. What is vital to 
it is the intuitive conviction that the various states of con- 
sciousness are mine. The peculiarity that they are not 
another's holds a much lower rank than this. The same 
thing must be said of the fact given in experience that such 
states are supplied to the consciousness of the Ego by a 
world which we pronounce to be the !N'on-ego, because its 
successive presentations are not under the control of our 
own will. Undoubtedly these two subordinate features are 
present in self-consciousness, as it is realized in the particular 
experience of an imperfectly developed and limited person- 
ality. Yet, even here, they seem to be accidental to 
personality and not of its essence. Even supposing that in 
some sense these features must attach to the self-consciousness 
of God, all that it would be legitimate to hold in this respect 
would be that the fact of His personality involves a creative 
act by which He sets up the universe over against Himself, 
and that this act involves self-distinction from it on the part 
of God, and His gift to it of a quasi-independence of Him. 
In short, so far as distinction and exclusiveness attach to 



488 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

personality, they are imposed upon us by the laws of the universe 
to which we are subject, while in God they are self-imposed by 
His creative activity. 

Further, it may be held that the personality of God 
involves the manifoldness of the divine nature and not its 
essential simplicity. If, therefore, there be any measure of 
validity in the objections taken to the attribution of per- 
sonality to God they apply to an abstract conception of that 
personality, and lose their force as objections to that Christian 
Theism which attributes not only unity but the eternal 
fellowship of the Trinity to the divine nature, and holds God 
to be distinct from the universe while spiritually immanent 
throughout it. 

Under pressure of such considerations those who deny 
personality to God are driven to contend that they are doing 
this in the hope of attaining to a worthier conception of His 
glory. Thus Herbert Spencer remarks "the choice is between 
personality and something higher." And he suggests that to 
the divine source of all things may belong "a mode of being 
as much transcending intelligence and will as these transcend 
mechanical motion." ^ The illustration used by Spencer sug- 
gests an error of thought. Mechanical motion does not in- 
clude intelligence and will; but intelligence and will, as we 
know them in man, include the power of mechanical motion. 
Supposing, therefore, that the Divine Being is naturally 
exalted above the mere creaturely conditions of intelligence 
and will, this upon the analogy would indeed subordinate 
intelligence and will to something higher within His own 
nature, but would not exclude them from it. That which is 
essential to any worthy doctrine of the nature of God is tb^ 
inclusion within it of that which is highest in the universe 
which it creates, together with that measure of transcendence 
which its essential superiority claims for it. What God may 
be beyond what is known and knowable by us it is impossible 
for us to say, for our conceptions are limited by our powers 
and experience. But that He must include in Himself all that 
is highest and inmost in the world which He creates, and in the 
relative order and preeminence which He reveals in us as 

* Spencer quoted by Ward, Rationalism and Agnosticism, vol. ii. p. 268. 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 489 

being true — this is the first principle which even Herbert 
Spencer admits by the very form of his attempt to find in 
God a higher than the highest we know. To deny, however, 
personality, including intelligence and will, to God for the 
sake of that higher is not only, as has been seen, unnecessary, 
and contrary to our own experience, but leads practically to 
the displacement of the higher by the lower. The deliberate 
superseding of intelligence and will, the highest faculties 
revealed to us in our own life, leaves in the result only the 
Inscrutable Power suggested to us by the experience of the 
material universe. Moreover, whatever may be the case with 
the form of intelligence and will, as we know them, it is 
impossible to conceive that any power can be higher than 
them which withdraws from its possessor the ability to say 
"This is mine." To imagine that power to be absent from 
God is, whatever may be said in words, to reduce Him below 
the level of His highest creatures, not to exalt Him above 
them. Hence the conclusion is that while we can have no 
adequate conception of a personality free from the limitations 
which are inherent in our own finitude, yet the very principle 
that the Divine Being must be higher than the highest of His 
own works involves a selfhood which, simply because it 
transcends theirs, can in no wise fail of the attribute of per- 
sonality as connoting the conscious appropriation of all that 
He is and does. In addition, the ceaseless striving of finite 
personality to transcend its limitations, and to appropriate 
the whole reality from which it distinguishes itself, is a 
prophetic witness to a personality in which this perfection 
is realized. 

II. The Spiritual Perfection of God. — The Christian 
doctrine of God includes not only His personality, but His 
spiritual perfection. That which is revealed in human con- 
sciousness as having the highest worth is eternally realized in 
Him. It is the fact that it is so realized in Him which 
makes it an ideal binding on man. The character of God 
constitutes the nature of moral distinctions as they are pro- 
gressively realized in the consciousness of man. It is due 
further to His character that spiritual and moral excellence 
takes precedence of all other ends which can be conceived and 



490 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

pursued by man. The spiritual constitution of human nature 
is grounded in the character and not merely in the will of 
God. To suppose that moral distinctions are prescribed by 
God by a mere exercise of His will apart from the spiritual 
characteristics of His own eternal life, is to set up merely 
external relations between Him and the universe which He 
creates. Such a conception was possible, perhaps, in the days 
when abstract Deism reigned in the philosophy of religion, 
but it becomes incredible when due regard is had to the 
divine immanence, as is the case with all recent thought. 
God so constitutes all reality that His character is the imma- 
nent law of all life. This conception is brought home to us 
throughout the Holy Scriptures, which unfailingly connect 
divine law with divine wisdom and love on the one hand, 
and with human well-being on the other. In this essential 
and intimate relationship between God and the world the 
doctrine of Scripture is in agreement with the most modern 
thought. The real issue, so far as His perfection is con- 
cerned, between Christian Theism and naturalism depends 
upon the relative worth which is ascribed to moral and to 
merely natural life. Once grant the supreme worth and 
authoritativeness of the moral over the physical, and there is 
exactly the same reason for ascribing to God supreme moral 
excellence, on the ground of the moral phenomena of the uni- 
verse, as exists for ascribing to Him infinite power on account 
of the physical. 

The underlying principle, therefore, of the Christian 
doctrine of the divine perfection is that what becomes 
manifest as the end of the evolution of the world is grounded 
in the character of its source, and that what God imposes as 
the immanent law of spiritual life and well-being He must' 
eternally realize in Himself. The justification of this con- 
clusion rests upon two main supports. In the first place we 
are guided to it by the analogy of our own life and of our 
quasi-creative relationship to the works which we produce. 
Man's handiwork bears the stamp of his own individuality. 
It is in very deed the uttering of himself. This is strikingly 
manifest in the highest creations of the poet, the artist, or the 
musician. It is equally true in regard to the humbler 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 491 

achievements of life, and to the sum total of those social pur- 
poses which constitute a man's life-work. 

Undoubtedly such self -revelation is in the case of men 
more or less incomplete. So far as it is imperfect, however, 
this failure 'is due to causes which are clearly ascertainable. 
Feebleness of executive power, the interference of other wills, 
limitation of place and opportunity, and, not least, the neces- 
sary use of an external and independent, though related, 
material — all these in various degrees limit the expression of 
man's inmost nature through his works. Moreover, as has 
been pointed out, man is at present an imperfectly developed 
personality. He attains maturity by means of a growing 
purpose, which struggles to express itself in action. He 
becomes what he ultimately is in the process of creating what 
expresses himself. The potentiality is real from the first. 
The main lines, or at all events the promise, of his distinctive 
individuality are already there. It is due to the conditions 
imposed upon him as the subject of growth in time that his 
individuality does not stand forth complete at the first. 
Hence analogy extends to God the main principle that His 
character is manifest with growing clearness in His works 
without the limitations which are due to externally imposed 
conditions, to foreign material, or to the process of becoming 
in time. 

Doubtless the divine method of creation does manifest 
something in the conditions of the divine life which is akin 
to the limitations imposed upon man by an external world. 
The very process of creation involves the grant to the 
creatures of that limited independence which is most strik- 
ingly manifest in human individuality. But the essential 
distinction between this and the limitation of the creature is 
that the first is the free act of God, whereas the second is an 
involuntary limitation of the creature, imposed upon him by 
the Creator. 

A similar distinction must be drawn when it is sought to 
extend the analogy of temporal development to God. It is 
sometimes argued that as man finds self-realization only by 
means of the completed activities of his life, so the self- 
realization of God can only be complete at the end of the 



492 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

process by which His purposes are fulfilled in the world. 
The consummation of all things is conceived to be necessary 
not merely to the accomplishment of the purposes of God, but 
in order to the complete attainment of His own perfection. 
Here, again, it would seem that the limitations of finite beings 
entering and leaving the world as subject to the time-order of 
human history, and realizing themselves only in the gradual 
achievement of purpose, are illegitimately extended to the one 
Being who is exalted above the time-order, since He con- 
stitutes it, and above all other conditions of human finitude. 
Hence the main analogy suggests that what God eternally is 
is manifest in what His creative and controlling Providence 
seeks to produce. 

The second argument is still more important than the first. 
It is contained in the essential testimony of the spiritual and 
moral consciousness. Mankind attains the goal of develop- 
ment through the gradual unfolding and enforcement of great 
ethical ideals. These have an individual and also collective 
application and influence. The ethical ideal belongs to 
individuals, and is in a measure accepted by communities. 
Yet it is more than mine, ours, the nation's, or even than 
mankind's. Its source lies beyond the individual or even 
the collective will. The testimony within it is that it springs 
from the Supreme Being who conditions our life, correlating 
it with nature, and coordinating it with the progress of the 
world. Its persistence, directive influence, social range and 
power over the world are due to this fact of transcendent 
origin. 

The peculiarity of the ethical ideal is that it carries with 
it the sense of obligation to obey it. In this it differs radi- 
cally from the aesthetic and other ideals of life. It expresses 
a command which is supreme over the individual will, over 
even the positive laws which are made and enforced by the 
community. It makes no abatement on account of my 
weakness . or predilections ; it contains within itself what 
Kant called "the categorical imperative" of duty. Moreover, 
speaking broadly, the ethical ideal is revealed under religious 
influences; it grows out of, and is accompanied by, the con- 
sciousness of the Divine. Hence, the religious man apprehends 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 493 

the moral ideal as having been given by God. It is laid down 
for us as His law; it is the law and goal of our life, because 
of His character. This consciousness that the character of 
God is the goal of our being is due to the fact that our life is 
immanent in His; that our inmost individuality has its spring 
in God. Hence, the moral ideal as thus presented in spiritual 
consciousness carries us back to the perfection of God as its 
source. Its authority, meaning, and certainty of fulfillment are 
found in Him. Its essential testimony is to its own supreme 
worth, so that the moral task of my life is to subdue all other 
motives, interests, and forces to its demands. 

It is in this fundamental fact of the spiritual and moral 
consciousness as it declares itself not merely in isolated in- 
dividuals, but in the great prophetic interpreters of the race, 
that the key to the revelation of the attributes of God is found. 
It is as manifest in His relations to human consciousness that 
God becomes known. His approach to man can only be along 
the avenues marked out in human nature itself. Speaking 
broadly, those avenues correspond to the main divisions into 
which human nature may for practical purposes be divided, 
namely: mind, character — ^with its affections and aspirations 
— and effective will. In relation to each of these God is 
revealed as infinite perfection. This involves that His nature 
is manifest in that which constitutes the worth of human 
nature, but that His perfection is such that it is free from 
the limitations involved in human finitude and evil. Thus, 
for example, the functions of the human mind are knowledge 
and wisdom; hence, correspondingly, the doctrine that God 
is omniscient and all-wise. The attribution of these two 
qualities to God carries with it the twofold affirmation that 
the human quality is a revelation of the divine, but that God 
possesses the qualities revealed in human nature in the per- 
fection which belongs to His freedom from creaturely limi- 
tations, and necessarily involved in His sovereign relationship 
to the world. 

Again, so far as character is concerned, such attributes as 
love, holiness, righteousness, truth, faithfulness are ascribed 
to God. They are the excellences manifest in the highest 
human character with the removal of their earthly limitations. 



494 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

and with the recognition of their divine supremacy in the 
world. 

So, finally, when we speak of the self-sufficiency, the 
immutability, the freedom, the omnipotence or the omni- 
presence of God, we are giving by means of all these attributes 
our definition of what is essential to the sovereignty of God 
as manifest in the world. In all these respects His nature 
represents the perfection which is faintly shadowed in ours. 
The intuition of His glory is given to the spiritual conscious- 
ness in the fellowship of religion. Its speculative justification 
is found by reflection on what is manifested in the relations 
of God to the world which He creates, constitutes, and 
maintains. 

From these attributes it is possible and even necessary to 
deduce still further qualities by a process of abstraction; for 
example, the unity and the spirituality of God. All these, how- 
ever, represent the last results of our analysis, and depend 
ultimately for their evidence upon that which God is revealed 
as being within our spiritual experience of Him. 

Hence, it becomes easy to perceive alike the substantial 
worth and the inherent inadequacy of all formal doctrines of 
God. As to the former, all human qualities are constituted by 
God, and therefore contain within themselves a representa- 
tion of His nature. They are founded in God, and are 
essential means of communion with Him. In and through 
them He is known; known therefore as akin to, though 
transcending, them. It is through their activity in history 
and in finite individuals that His purposes are wrought out. 
Therefore the conception of God as revealed to man in and 
through the experiences of spiritual and ethical life is that He 
is the infinite perfection to which all human powers and virtues 
testify, the perfect order in which all divergent values receive 
their due. Such is the positive testimony of the religious 
consciousness. 

On the other hand, it is clear that this testimony is in- 
adequate. Man at his best is quite unable fully to realize 
what his own unattained perfection would be like. He 
cannot clearly present it to himself as an objective state of 
being; still less can he enter into the state of satisfaction 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 495 

which would accompany it. The secret of such complete 
satisfaction can only be read when self-fulfillment is finally 
reached. How much less competent, therefore, must man be 
to represent to himself what is involved in the perfection of 
God! Not only must God be conceived as free from the 
imperfection of moral evil, but in addition His eternal 
existence is entirely free from creaturely limitations, and 
knows nothing of the finite struggle towards self-realization; 
while as Creator of the instruments of His eternal purposes. 
He stands in relations to them which no mere creature can 
conceive. Hence it is impossible to represent to ourselves in 
any satisfactory way what the divine perfections are as eternally 
free from all those limitations through which they are 
revealed to man. 

Yet this does not imply that our nature and what is 
revealed to us in and through it contains no revelation of the 
nature of God. The controversy between Mansel and 
J. S. Mill may be harmonized by avoiding the extremes into 
which each fell. Because man is no adequate measure of the 
divine nature it by no means follows that his spiritual and 
moral intuitions are merely regulative, as Mansel thought. 
As the latter understood them they contained no real revela- 
tion of the nature of God. On the other hand, the impatient 
retort of Mill seems unduly to minimize the difficulty of com- 
prehending the nature of God that is intrinsically bound up 
with the limitations of human faculties. The truth lies between 
the extreme contentions. Our doctrine of God is founded on 
the revelation given to the intuitive faculties of our spiritual 
and moral being. It has been given in special measure to 
those who have most fully attained the perfection of those 
faculties in the spiritual history of mankind. Such a revela- 
tion is more than regulative, for the divine life is immanent in 
human nature, and constitutes it capable of entering into 
fellowship with God. 

On the other hand, the divine perfection is exhibited to 
us under the limitations which our imperfect development 
and our creaturely finitude impose. The highest intuitions 
of God are therefore true, but cannot adequately present to 
us the whole truth; for if this latter were possible we must. 



496 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

as has already been observed, become God and not men. 
Hence the Christian doctrine of God necessitates the most 
careful reflection lest our formal theology should magnify 
exactly the human limitations of our conceptions instead of 
seeing clearly that they are limitations. For example, the 
exaggeration of power as an attribute of God which is found 
in all extreme doctrines of His sovereignty, exhibits a lack 
of true proportion in our conception of the divine nature 
due largely to our dissatisfaction with our own want of 
mastery over inert or refractory material. Under such con- 
ditions the omnipotence of God may appear to us as a power 
to break down such opposition by an overwhelming exercise 
of force. Yet this would be to extend to Him in thought 
the condition of our own mere externality to the desired 
instruments of our will, and cannot be a true indication of 
the real inwardness and influence of His relation, as Creator, 
to His creatures. 

Many similar illustrations could easily be afforded. But 
suflRcient has been said to show that the conception of the 
divine attributes given in and to the spiritual consciousness 
of man is a real guide to the nature of God, though it must 
remain incommensurate with the divine perfection, and that 
human reflection cannot remove that incommensurateness 
because its highest exercise is bounded by the limitations from 
which it took its rise. 

III. The Transcendence and Immanence of God. 

God is eternal and all-perfect personality. He is the supreme 
existence on whom all things depend, and in whom they find 
their ultimate explanation. Their source, meaning, law, and 
end are all in Him. In a word, He constitutes their reality. 
Their existence, order, and development are all due to Him. 
They so derive their existence from Him that His reason 
makes them intelligible. His character appoints their end. 
His will alike creates and sustains them. This involves, to 
begin with, the transcendence of God. He is the First Cause, 
the rational principle, and the sustaining life of all things. 
He is not an aspect of them as Pantheism involves. On the 
contrary, He is their only and suflBcient explanation. Hence, 
He is not dependent upon them, but they upon Him. The 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 497 

spiritual has primacy of existence. The material, as such, is 
but secondary and subordinate to it. God is absolute, not in 
the sense that He cannot or will not enter into relations with 
the universe, but in the sense that such relations are due to the 
act of His own will, and depend upon the perfection of His 
own nature. 

In the same way that His transcendence involves His abso- 
luteness, it also implies His infinity. The infinite riches of 
His life are not completely manifest in the world which we 
know as it already exists. The deeper and the wider fulfillments 
of the future are already real to Him. What they ultimately 
become will only be a manifestation of what He eternally is. 
Moreover, for all we know, there may be countless other uni- 
verses, the very existence of which is beyond the conception of 
our limited faculties. If this be so. His being must be as 
completely their explanation as it is of the only universe which 
is apprehensible by us. 

It is impossible, therefore, to set bounds to the fullness 
and perfection of the divine nature, though the authority 
of the highest spiritual and moral intuitions of the race 
reveal a holiness and consistency in the divine character 
which cannot possibly be contradicted in any possible universe 
which may owe its origin to Him. Hence the transcendence 
of God means both the absoluteness of His relation to the 
world in the sense that has been defined and the infinity of 
His perfections as not limited by the world which He creates. 
Yet, if God is transcendent over the universe. He is also 
immanent throughout it. The world is an expression of His 
mind and will; an instrument of His purposes, the scene 
and medium of His self-revelation. All this implies its 
dependence upon Him and its distinction from Him. Yet 
the very fact that it stands in such vital relations to Him 
is a proof that its ultimate nature is spiritual. His law is 
not imposed upon it from without, nor is His power over 
it external, as is the power which man imperfectly exercises 
over his material instruments. Without the divine thought, 
purpose, and act, the world, both in whole and in all its 
parts, has neither meaning nor existence. The divine character 
is implicit in all things, though their finitude, in all the 



498 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

untold varieties of limitation in which it is manifested, prevents 
each and all from displaying, except in the most inadequate 
way, the divine glory. 

The analogy of the relation between God and the world 
is not to be found in the relation of man to the external and 
material instruments which he uses, but in his relation to 
the states of his own mental and moral life. These, while 
they cannot be severed from the personality which they 
manifest and to which they are relative, yet tend to possess 
a limited independence of their own. They constitute a 
systematic series; they have a power and persistence which 
may be independent of, or may even resist, the direct fiat 
of the human will. Such a state of existence is manifest 
in various fixed ideas, trains of thought, tendencies of action 
and the like, which cannot exist without our personality, 
are immanent in it, and yet seem to have relative independence 
of our will. 

It is clear that no such analogy can be adequate to set 
forth the relationship in which God stands to the universe, 
but at least it is more relevant, and therefore more suggestive 
of the reality, than the merely external use of instruments 
can possibly be. We may gather from it some suggestion 
of the way in which God stands related to His works, though 
the transcendent reality can never be completely represented 
either by human imagination or by reflection. Two aspects 
of creaturely existence are apprehended by us: its dependence 
upon God, and, at the same time, its measure of independence. 
Each is entitled to be believed, though the relation of the 
one to the other cannot be completely explained. The 
analogy from our own conscious states furnishes a suggestion 
of the way in which the ultimate harmony may exist. It 
can hardly be expected that human thought should have 
power to do more. The one thing which is fatal to truth 
is the sacrifice of either aspect of the whole to the other, 
because human thought finds it impossible completely to 
harmonize them. 

IV. The Sovereignty of God in accordance with, and for 
the saTce of, the highest ends. 

The fact that the meaning, purpose, and order of things 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 499 

are not merely imposed upon them from without, but constitute 
their divinely given nature, shows how complete is the divine 
sovereignty over them. Any mere external sovereignty of bare 
will and effective power is poor compared with such an internal 
and constitutive relationship. 

Again, the measure of our own control over the states of 
our inner life is the nearest, though an imperfect analogy 
to that which is meant by the sovereignty of God. Yet the 
end determines the means, the character prescribes the method 
of the divine sovereignty. The highest end of God is, as 
has been seen, spiritual and moral. It is fulfilled by the 
constitution and education of spiritual and moral personalities. 
Hence, this is the highest act of God's creative and provi- 
dential sovereignty. The fullest revelation of Himself is 
contained in His creating such personalities, laying down 
the conditions which are necessary to their existence and 
to their perfecting. Looked at from one standpoint this is 
the limitation of His sovereignty by the gift of freedom. 
From a higher standpoint it is the noblest manifestation 
of His sovereignty and of the spiritual attributes which 
characterize it. 

If the constitution of such personalities be the highest 
end sought by God's sovereignty, the whole of His method 
throughout a coherent universe must be in keeping with 
this culminating purpose. The individuality which has its 
highest manifestation in the freedom of moral personalities 
must be foreshadowed in the general relations in which all 
created existences stand to the Creator. The immanence in 
the divine nature which gives to them alike their existence 
and the laws of their external relations, cannot be incom- 
patible with the foreshadowing of that being-for-self which 
characterizes moral individuality. The sovereignty of God 
cannot be inconsistent wth the ascription of a measure of in- 
trinsic worth and independence to all that exists in a universe 
that is to be consummated by the introduction of spiritual and 
moral personality. 

If, then, the divine end prescribes the method and meaning 
of the whole process of creation, it also defines the subsequent 
manifestation of God's sovereignty. From beginning to end 



500 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

its object must be to maintain and perfect that which has been 
set up under the conditions necessary to, and embodied in, its 
existence. If the constitution of spiritual and moral beings 
and the securing of their perfection be the divine end, then the 
development of all that is involved in individuality and freedom 
must be the condition of it. Hence the method of the divine 
sovereignty must be one which not only confers the gift of moral 
freedom to begin with, but respects it throughout the whole 
course of the divine dealings. 

The divine sovereignty which enacts the freedom of moral 
individuality must make all the ways of the divine approach 
to men not only consistent with that freedom, but favorable 
to its development. Herein dies the possibility of sin in a 
divinely ordered world. There can be no such thing as 
holiness unless there be the possibility of sin. The holy 
character which sets up holiness as the great end to be 
attained by the creature must thereby admit conditions 
which, in opening the way to moral goodness, equally open 
it to moral evil. No definitions of the divine sovereignty 
must exclude the real existence of moral freedom and the 
consequences which are bound up in it. Nor must they 
evade the practical difficulties by the supposition that the 
consciousness of sin is a salutary illusion, and that all life 
must be equally pleasing to God simply because it exists. 
The disposition to fall into this errOr is due to a misinter- 
pretation of what is meant by the sovereignty of God. It is 
an attempt to magnify the mere element of power till it is 
understood to mean a control which renders moral personality 
impossible. 

The whole consciousness of man refutes this interpretation. 
It is better to admit that all speculative endeavor adequately 
to realize the nature of the divine sovereignty must remain 
imperfect, than in the interests of such endeavors to suppress 
those essential facts of spiritual and moral history in which 
the nature of the divine sovereignty is revealed. The 
sovereignty which issues in a moral history must, from 
first to last, be compatible with the moral freedom which 
is its highest end. The difficulty of representing this, and 
all that it involves, to human thought does not entitle us 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 501 

to set aside the prevailing facts by which its reality is brought 
home. 

V. The Supremacy of Love in God. 

The Christian doctrine of God involves the supremacy 
of love in the divine nature. By this is meant that the 
supreme principle in the divine character is that which 
eternally prompts to self-giving in order to create, to sustain, 
and to satisfy objects of divine fellow^ship. The essential 
of all love is self-giving in order to fellowship and satisfac- 
tion in fellowship. The peculiarity of the divine love as 
manifested in the universe is that it is creative, that it is 
the source and ground of the objects w^hch it constitutes for 
fellowship and satisfies with it. The statement of St. John that 
"God is Love," is an inference from the whole content of the 
Christian revelation and from the whole effect of that revelation 
on human life. 

1. In the first place the entire meaning of the fellowship 
with God, which is realized in true religion, rests upon 
this great truth. Eeligion, as it manifests itself in its highest 
forms, whether as preparatory to Christianity, or within 
Christianity, consists in the personal fellowship which mani- 
fests grace on the part of God and free self-surrender on 
the part of man. It emphasizes personality on the side of 
God; it involves the steady perfecting of personality on 
the side of man. All fellowship is the alliance of person- 
alities. So far is the principle of personality from being 
hostile to fellowship, that it is indispensable to it. The 
triumph of personality is that it exists, not in isolation, but 
in the free self-surrender which enables it to share thoughts, 
affections, desires, and purposes with others. The highest 
manifestation of this is found in the religious relationship. 
In the case of human fellowship, that which at once em- 
phasizes personality, and removes its isolation is the power 
of love. Above all, therefore, is love manifest in the essential 
conditions of the religious consciousness and throughout its 
development. 

2. If love is involved in the general conditions of the 
religious relationship, still more is it revealed in the character 
and work of Christ, in whom and by whom the religious 



502 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

relationship is perfected. Christ, as the Son of God, stands ia 
the perfect relationship of fellowship with the Father. In Him, 
for the first time, is the divine fellowship so perfectly mani- 
fested that its perfection in degree involves a unique distinction 
in kind. 

Yet, impassable as is this distinction, Christ as the Son of 
the Father, in a most real way represents the spiritual ideal 
for all men; that which they tend to become in so far as they 
are delivered from sinfulness and frailty. From this sinfulness 
and frailty He is their Eedeemer, and His redemptive work 
is accomplished by the limitless self-sacrifice of His love on 
their behalf. In so far as the effect of that redemptive love 
is produced in their hearts and lives, they become possessed 
by His own spirit of love to the Father and to mankind. 
The whole motive, method, and end of redemption is 
therefore to be found in the love of God manifest in and 
through Christ. 

3. In a world so consummated it becomes evident that 
the highest and best quality is love. Despite all the opposi- 
tion which it has to overcome it is not only the best but 
the mightiest thing in the world. The one thing which 
is indispensable, not merely to the well-being, but even to 
the being of the world as we know it, is love. The progress 
of civilization depends upon the ever-increasing influence of 
love in molding the ideals, the relationships and the desires of 
mankind. 

4. This principle, which manifests itself as the culmination 
of human life, strikes deep down beneath the surface and ex- 
tends far back beyond the human in the constitution of the 
world. It emerges, so to speak, from beneath. The spiritual 
in which it is perfected is prepared for in the animal, and even 
in the physical. 

Such, generally speaking, is the constitutive function of 
love in the world. The counterpart and explanation of this 
function is the supremacy of love in God. None of these 
things could be, still less could they be as part of one 
inter-related system, were it not that God is love. N"o other 
attribute could constitute such a world. All the other 
attributes of God which can be named or thought of will 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 503 

be seen by reflection upon their definition to be inadequate 
to explain the motive of the divine activity. Power may 
bring a world into being where the motive for its existence 
is present, but the motive for using the power, and still more 
for using it in constituting a spiritual universe, must be found 
elsewhere. Wisdom may order it, but wisdom consists in se- 
lecting the highest ends, and directing the means of their 
realization. The highest ends which wisdom selects and main- 
tains are to be found in the spiritual treasures or possibilities 
of a character which supplies the material to wisdom. 
Eighteousness respects and maintains that which is committed 
to its care. But there its powers begin and end. It does not 
explain the presence or nature of that which it safeguards. 
That which supplies the motive to power, the end to wisdom, 
and the trust to righteousness is love. It is love also which 
creates the sanctity which holiness reverences. Hence, the 
universe consummated in Christ is the witness to the supremacy 
of love in God. 

Hence, also, reflection upon the divine attributes by which 
the world thus constituted is maintained again witnesses to the 
supremacy of love. Love can be conceived as begetting and 
inspiring all the rest. None of the rest, nor all combined, 
can be treated as the source or explanation of love. N'or can 
all these attributes be treated as independent springs of action, 
existing and working independently of one another. That 
which is achieved by their cooperation is the supreme mani- 
festation and satisfaction of love. All the rest are ancillary 
to this. Hence, love comes — if the expression may be used — 
nearer to the heart of the Divine Personality than any of those 
other attributes which, however august their nature and im- 
portant their ofiice, do but take their instructions from love and 
perfect its work. 

Therefore ultimately love rather than reason is the ex- 
planation of the system of the world. The system satisfies 
reason only so far as it subserves love. For man as he 
is constituted perplexity begins where it is impossible clearly 
to trace the handiwork of love. The very tenacity with 
which he interrogates system, however conclusively laid bare, 
until he finds love as its final cause is an additional witness 



504 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

to the supremacy of love in the constitution of the world. It is 
the one inexorable principle which must be satisfied, if a reason- 
able explanation of the universe is to be found. 

Herein, finally, does the Christian consciousness supplement 
the onesidedness of the Aristotelian conception of God. For 
Aristotle, the Divine Being is the source of attraction to the 
whole creation; hence all things move in harmony towards the 
divine center of their being, Himself unmoved. A fuller revela- 
tion of the spiritual consciousness, and a truer knowledge of 
what is involved in it, shows that the spiritual movement of 
creation towards its source is the outcome of the divine move- 
ment of love towards the creatures. God is the center of 
attraction, the principle alike of coherence and progress for all 
things, because the fullness of His self-giving reveals His 
spiritual perfection as boundless love. 

VI. The unity in the Godhead of internal self-realization, of 
external self 'Communication, and of satisfaction in the return 
of creation to Himself in fellowship and service. 

This threefold unity is involved in the supremacy of love. 
It is obvious that that which first becomes manifest to man 
is the divine self-communication. Without such revelation 
not only can there be no knowledge of God, but no conception 
of Him. In this respect it may well prove to be true, as is 
urged by the ontological argument, that the thought of God 
proves His existence. This does not imply that the thought 
of God is, or even can be, adequate to His perfection. But 
the very fact that the human mind is constrained to pass 
beyond itself and beyond the sum-total of things to conceive 
a Supreme Cause and a Sufficient Eeason for their existence 
reveals a constitution of the human mind which is the 
necessary result and manifestation of its origination by a 
divine source, and can only be explained on that ground. In 
short, a Godless world could not be a God-conceiving and a 
God-worshiping world. The conception and the worship 
may both be imperfect, but the impulse, both to the one and 
to the other, inspired alike by the spiritual, moral, rational, 
and affectional elements which unite in human personality, 
can only be rationally explained on the ground that it is a 
revelation of the divine reality. The spiritual history of the 



THE DOCTRINE OP GOD 505 

human race, which is religious to its core, must possess an inner 
reason which justifies it. 

Above all, the self-communication of God is found in the 
work and influence of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the supreme 
personality in the history of the world; revealing God in and to 
the world. Hence from His historic revelation there follows a 
new and deeper experience of God. A new and larger concep- 
tion of Him, a holier and more spiritual worship, grow out of 
the experienced relationship of sonship. Under the combined 
influence of the historic manifestation and the inner experi- 
ence of Christ men become conscious that they are face to face 
with God in His final and human manifestation in the Divine 
Son of Man. The appearance of Christ, therefore, and His 
spiritual work, are the evidence that self-communication is the 
law of the divine life. 

This principle thus clearly manifested casts a light upon the 
whole range of reality. 

1. The perfect act of divine self -communication in Christ 
is seen to stand in closest relation with the whole work of 
creation, and to have the most important consequences for 
the consummation of all things. It sheds light upon the 
relation of all things to God, upon the meaning of the history 
which is being wrought out in and through them, and upon 
the spiritual goal towards which they proceed. The mani- 
festation of God in Christ, though unique, is not an isolated 
action. In its connection with all that has been, and all that 
is to be, it is a clear indication that self-communication is of 
the very life of God. 

2. The God who makes this self-communication is revealed 
in it as eternally possessing spiritual perfection, and especially 
as freely acting from the eternal motive of love. He did not 
become love as the consequence of a creative act. The fact 
that He is love cannot depend upon His temporal relation 
to any finite being, but upon His own infinite and eternal 
perfection. Hence the creative relationship of God to the 
world involves His eternal self-realization. He could not 
become perfect by creating; He must be perfect in order iol 
create. And this eternal and infinite perfection, which is 
necessary in order to creation, must be, as has been seen, the 



506 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

perfection of love, which is the only motive to the creation of a 
spiritual universe. 

Hence, the eternal self-realization of God is the realization 
within the divine nature of love. A loveless God cannot 
create, and the prevision of a universe which He can love if 
He creates it, is an insufficient object to enable us to say that 
God is love. For the object of love is as eternal as love. 
Love as an abstract possibility waiting for a future object 
and preconceiving it is unthinkable. Love is essentially social, 
and cannot exist, save in and for the fellowship which calls it 
forth and satisfies it. Hence that the nature of God may be 
eternal love, and may, therefore, have the principle which is 
essential to creative self-communication, it is necessary that the 
nature of God should, in some way not fully comprehensible by 
us, be social. 

3. The relation between the Creator and the created is, as 
has been seen, not one of pure externality. The transcendence 
of God cannot conflict with His immanence. The world as it 
exists and becomes conscious of the divine must proceed from 
and rest upon the nature of the Godhead. The modes of its 
consciousness of God must correspond with the nature of the 
God of whom it is conscious. That consciousness is threefold; 
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The perfected / 
Christian consciousness subsists in a relationship to God which 
holda these modes or aspects in unity. The God whom it seeks 
to find is the source and goal, the law and meaning, the impulse 
and inspiration, of religious consciousness. That consciousness 
points to the Father as the source and goal, to the Son as 
the law and meaning, to the Spirit as the impulse and 
inspiration of its life. 

Hence, the Christian doctrine of the Godhead as triune 
is the joint result of all these factors. It is made known in y 
the self-communication of Christ. It is a condition of the 
eternal perfection of God, as love without which creation and 
redemption are alike unthinkable, and it is reflected in the 
characteristic consciousness of God which grows out of the 
faith of Christ. 

Such are the roots and the essential justification of the 
Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Its speculative 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 507 

development and its dogmatic definition have of necessity 
passed through many stages. There is no more reason to 
suppose that finality has been obtained in this than in any 
other great object of human thought. We may reasonably 
suppose on so high and difficult a matter that the reverse is 
true. Many human analogies have been offered by theologians 
as helping men to appreciate the internal and external relation- 
ships of the Godhead. These can never be more than faint 
suggestions, at the best, of something which is unique. The 
definition of the sense in which there can be Three Persons 
in the one Godhead without an arithmetical contradiction — 
which would be as absurd to the highest Christian thought 
as to that of its opponents — is still the subject of much 
dispute. The place for the discussion of this subject is 
in Christian dogmatics, and not in a book on Christian 
Evidences. But while human thought can only approximate! 
as the result of much reflection and discussion to a divine I 
reality, which it can never reach, the main lines of the doctrine / 
and the abiding grounds of its justification are found in I 
revelation on the one hand, as reflected in the spiritual 
experience of Christians, and, on the other, in those specu- , 
lative considerations which, in ascertaining what is necessary ' 
to the nature of the Godhead in order that He may be what 
is manifest in the world, confirm the spiritual experience of 
believers in Christ. 

VII. In conclusion, the doctrine of the Divine Father- 
hood, when properly understood, affords the most satisfactory 
conception of the nature of God and of His relationship to man- 
kind, and in a sense to creation as a whole. The following 
features in the divine relationship to creation, and, above all, to 
spiritual beings, must be borne in mind. 

In the first place, it is sui generis. However it may be illus- 
trated, and in a measure reproduced in the relations between 
the creatures themselves, such relations can only partially 
shadow forth what is in its nature unique. Only one being, that 
is God, stands related to all things as their creative source, 
ground, and end. 

In the next place, the relationship in which God stands to 
creation has a positive character of its own. Frequent 



508 THE. CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

attempts have been made to characterize God by negatives. 
It is sometimes argued that we cannot have any positive 
conception of Him, and that the best we can do is to attempt 
to describe Him by negating all the characteristics of the 
creature, as, for example, by declaring Him to be infinite in 
contrast with the finitude of the creature. Such a contention 
has a measure of validity, but it does not represent the final 
truth of the matter. God is revealed to us in a relationship 
which manifests positive characteristics. The merely logical 
contradictory of all that the creature is, would in itself give us 
no grounds for believing in the existence of God. This must be 
found, not by way of contrast to the creature, but by means of 
the positive qualities which are unfolded in God's dealings with 
the universe. Undoubtedly the final fact of this positive revela- 
tion is to show that God is free from the limitations which 
creaturely imperfection imposes upon mankind. But the vital 
concern for religion lies not so much in the negative as in the 
positive, which is thus revealed. 

In the next place, the relationship of God to spiritual beings 
must be so vital and comprehensive as to include the varying 
functions by which He deals with the varying spiritual and 
moral conditions that prevail ia individual men. All that 
God does and is towards them in the changing conditions of 
their spiritual, moral, and physical life, must be seen to be the 
natural outcome of the all-embracing relationship in which 
He originally stands to them. Men may stand in totally 
different relations to one another at different times of their 
life and under different conditions. This is because their 
contact with one another is, for the most part, comparatively 
external and accidental. Occasionally they stand in a closer 
relationship, which m^ay be so comprehensive as to be the 
spring of all their mutual dealings. This is peculiarly the 
case with the parental relationship. The human father stands 
in many transitory relations to his child. He is by turns 
guardian, sovereign, judge, teacher and the rest. Yet all 
these functions do but fulfill the nature and end of the deep 
and comprehensive relationship of fatherhood, which can 
never be set aside and held in suspense. The justification of 
all other functions is not merely that they are compatible 



THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 509 

with fatherhood, but that they spring out of it and serve its 
purposes. If this be the case with the intimate human 
relationship, a fortiori it must be the case with the relations 
in which God stands to the creature. Being the source and 
ground of their being, the relationship in which He stands to 
them must be large enough to comprehend all His dealings 
with them, and to unfold the fullness of its original meaning 
throughout all the changing experiences of their life-history, 
however various and however prolonged. Above all, this rela- 
tionship, while it explains the creative activity of God, must be 
adequate to explain the grace and truth which were manifest in 
Jesus Christ. 

There is only one conception of the divine relationship 
which approximately satisfies all these conditions. It is that 
of fatherhood. It is true that even this suffers from the 
imperfection which must mark the extension of all human 
analogies to God. The criticism of reflection must be exercised 
upon it, in order to clear it of suggestions which are obviously 
inapplicable to God, and to enrich it by the truth of His 
immanence, which is applicable to Him alone. Yet, when this 
is done, this relationship conforms to the reality in a degree 
which is unapproached by any other conception. It suggests 
divine perfection as being the motive of creation. It makes 
clear that the spring and end of all God's dealings is love. 
It is, as has been seen, so comprehensive as to include all the 
various manifestations of the divine mind and the activities 
of the divine wUl towards men, according to their changing 
needs and to the measure of their response to, or divergence 
from, the purposes of God. All that God is or can be to men 
throughout the whole of their life-history as Creator, Sustainer, 
Eedeemer, Sovereign, Judge — all that He can manifest to 
them as gracious and merciful, righteous or wrathful, springs 
out of and fulfills the meaning of the all-comprehending re- 
lationship of fatherhood. Erom the standpoint of men, this 
relationship, as has been seen, expresses their worth to God, 
and the end of their existence as being to attain complete and 
permanent likeness to and fellowship with God. There can 
be no prospect of this conception ever being superseded or 
merged in a higher. Human experience here below will 



510 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

never unfold to us a higher, deeper, or more comprehensive 
relationship than that of fatherhood. 

Hence the doctrine of God, derived by abstraction from 
the facts and experiences of the Christian religion, satisfies 
the highest tests to which it can fairly be subjected by formal 
thought. Revelation, religion, reflection, all unite in offering to 
us the content of the Christian religion, as being the supreme 
truth which verifies itself by affording the indispensable, com- 
plete, and only explanation of the meaning and end of the 
universe. The one fact which, in its relation to all other facts, 
reveals their meaning and end, is the fact of Christ. To come 
to Him is to enter into an experience of spiritual life which 
supplies a suflBcient reason for all thought, inspiration for all 
duty, satisfaction for all spiritual need, in the revelation of the 
Divine Fatherhood and the realization of the human sonship, 
without which the universe is as baffling to the reason as it is 
disappointing to the heart, and unworthy of the moral ideals 
which it has fostered. To the end of time the demand made 
by the necessities of man, alike spiritual, moral, and intellectual, 
will be "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." To the end of 
time, also, the supreme verification of the Christian religion 
will lie in the challenge of Christ, "I am the way, and the 
truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by 
Me,'' and in the continuous fulfillment in Christian experience 
of His word, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 



INDEX 



Absolute, the, 335 

Absolute Idealism, 284 

Adaptation, imperfect, 387 

Adoption, 129 

Aeschylus, 193 

Agnosticism, 50, 91, 96, 321, 332, 

335, 369 
Albertus Magnus, 31 
Alexandria, 28 
Amos, 23 

Analogy, Butler's, 42, 44, 62 
Analects, the, of Confucius, 197 seq. 
Ancestor-worship, 173, 189 seq. 
Anglican Church, the, 35 
Animism, 189 seq. 
Anselm, 31 

his Cur Deus Homo, 31 

his Proslogion, 31 

his Ontological Proof, 36 
Anthropomorphism, 144, 261, 360 
Apocalyptic, Old Testament, 114 
Apologetics, Old Testament, 20-24 

New Testament, 24, 25 
Aquinas, 31, 62, 66, 67 
Aristotle, 47, 54, 67, 175, 201, 504 
Aristophanes, 194 
Arnold, M., 58, 139 
Aryan religion, 162, 183, 203 
Atoms, 354 
Atcmement, the, 130, 131 n., 234, 

416, 459 seq. 
Attributes of God, the, 69, 80, 107, 

493, 502 
Augustine, St., 30, 245, 392 

his De Civitate Dei, 30 

his De Trinitate, 30 

B 

Bacchic rites, 188 
Bacon, Francis, 36, 37, 54 

his Advancement of Learning, 37 

his Novum Organum, 37 
Balfour, A. J., Address to British 
Association, 322-5 



Belief in Christianity, 90 
Belief in an external world, 91 
Berkeley, 89 
Boethius, 30 
Brahmanas, the, 203 
Brahminism, 148, 202, 228, 277 
Buddha, 174, 212 
Buddhism, 212 seq., 228, 277. 
Butler's Analogy, 42, 44, 62, 67, 88, 
395 



Caste system, 202 

Causality, principle of, 45, 75, 353, 

363 
Cause, first, 31, 338 
Chance, 344 seq. 
Chief good, the, 82, 83 
Chinese classics, the, 199 
Christ, religious consciousness of, 
104, 105, 108, 109, 110 
Sonship of, 104 
Messiahship of, 109 
offices of, 113, 114 
work of, 113 

His conception of the kingdom of 
God, 115 
Christ, a Supreme Spiritual Person- 
ality, 119 
"The Truth," 125 
the "world-place" of, 135, 136 
divinity of, 283 

portraitm-e of, in the Gospels, 453 
Christianity — a missionary religion, 
24, 243 
proof of, 92, 251 seq. 
the perfect religion, 103 
its relation to other religions, 138 
as the fulfilment of religion, 225 

seq. 
a revelation, 226 
an experience, 226, 251 seq. 
and Judaism, 236 
the best explanation of the worlds 
265 seq. 



511 



518 



INDEX 



Clement of Alexandria, 29, 30 

Clerk-MaxweU, Prof., 356 

Coleridge, Dr. Hort on, 166 

Confucius, his Analects, 168, 197 seq. 

Confucianism, 196 seq. 

Conscience, 437 seq. See Moral Con- 
sciousness 

Consciousness, 316, 358, 364 
subliminal, 434, 484 
of God, 89, 90 
of self, 89, 316 

the Christian, 10, 12, 230, 252, 
270 

"Conservation of Value," Hoff- 
ding's, 285 seq. 

Cosmic emotion, 282 

Cosmological argument, the, 49, 94, 
337 

Cosmological idea, the, 48 

Continuity, principle of, 5-7, 11 

Creation, the, 31 

Criticism, historical, 119 

Critique of Pure Reason, Kant's, 48, 
49 

D 

Darwin, C, 59, 318, 320 

Darwin, G. H., 310, 321, 322, 325 

Darwinism, 379. See Evolution, 
and Natural Selection 

Data of Ethics, Spencer's, 331 n. 

Davids, Rhys: his Hibbert Lecture, 
213, 214, 232 

Death, 402 

Deism, 36 

Deistic controversy, the, 36, 41 

Depravity, human, 392, 444 

Des Cartes, 36, 39, 44 

Design in nature, 39 

Design argument, the, 49, 68, 375 
seq., 381 

Desire for the Infinite, the, 158, 188 

Determinism, 431 

Dionysius, the pseudo, 30 

Dionysius, worship of, 188 

Discipleship, 113 

Distinction, principle of, 12 

Dreams and visions, 161 



Dualism, philosophical, 365 
Zoroastrian, 218 seq. 

E 
Energy, 355, 358 
Environment, 39i 
Epicureanism, 25 
Ethical ideal, the, 492 
Ethical Theory, Types of, Marti- 

neau's, 79 
Ethics, Data of, Spencer's, 331 n. 
Ethnic religions, the, 181 seq. 
Euripides, 193 
Evidences, Cliristian, defects in, 4, 5 

function of, 17 

present task of, 87 seq. 

history of, 17. 

inadequacy of existing systems of, 
55-61 

limitations of, 60 

and natural science, 57-60 

and philosophy, 61 

Christ, the starting-point of, 101 

Paley's system of, 46 
Evil, 179, 390, 392, 476 
Evil, mystery of, 59 
Evolution, doctrine of, 59, 117, 318 

"gaps" in, 341 
Expiation, 163 
Explanation of the world. Christian 

and naturalistic, 294 seq. 



Faith, principle of, 370 

Christian, philosophy of, 120, 122 

and Reason, 38-40 
Fall, the, 32, 442 
Family life, 149 
Fatherhood of God, 104, 105, 245, 

271, 458, 474, 485, 507 seq. 
Fathers, the Church, 30 
Fellowship, Cliristian, 113, 464 

vdth God, 501 
Fichte, 76 n. 
Final causes, 311, 385 
First Principles, Spencer's, quoted, 
51, 139, 319, 329 



INDEX 



513 



Freewill, 385, 419, 420, 500 
Future life, 70, 401, 467 seq. 



Ghost theory of origin of religion, 

191 
God, doctrine of, 106, 480 seq. 

transcendence of, 11, 108, 465, 
496 seq., 506 

immanence of, 11, 108, 434, 465, 
496 seq. 

the love of, 455 

the ^Tath of, 461 

supremacy of love in, 501 seq. 

personality of. See Personality 

sovereignty of. See Sovereignty 

spiritual perfection of, 489 seq. 

omnipotence of, 389 

idea of, 49 

consciousness of, 64, 89, 90 

attributes of, 69, 80, 107, 493, 502 

union with, 446 

fellowship with, 464, 501 

Fatherhood of. See Fatherhood 

Aristotle's conception of, 504 
Good, the chief, 82, 83 
Gospel, the fourth, 120, 128 
Gough, Philosophy of the Upani- 

shads, 205 seq., 213 
Grace, 12, 412, 455 
Greek religion, 18, 169, 173, 183, 
188, 190, 193 seq. 

H 

Habit, 407 
Haeckel, 333, 337 
Hamilton, Sir W., 51 
Heathenism, 23 
Hebrew religion, 236 seq. 
Hegel, 52 
Hegelianism, 52 
Hellenic religion, 193 seq. 
Helmholz, 379 
Heraclitus, 317 
Heredity, 391 
Hesiod, 193, 194 
Hinduism, 148, 202 seq., 413 



Hoffding, Philosophy of Religion, 

285 seq. 
Holy, sense of the, 371, 500 
Homer, 193 
Hort, Dr., The Way, the Truth, and 

the Life, quoted, 8, 1 1 
Hosea, 23 

Himianism, Greek, 193 seq. 
Humanity, religion of, 283 
Human Understanding, Locke's, 40 
Hume, 44, 45, 46, 353, 363 
Huxley, 51, 331 



Ideas, innate, 39 

Idealism, absolute, 52, 284 

Ideal, the ethical, 492 

Identity, 350 

Idolatry, 170 

Dlingworth, J. R., Christian Charac- 
ter, quoted, 177 

Illuminationist movement, the, 36 

Immanence of God, 11, 117, 465, 
496 seq., 506 

Incarnation, the, 118, 233, 413, 415. 
448, 456 seq. 

Individuality. See Self and Self- 
hood 

Infinite, the, 335 
desire for, 158 

Influence, 391 

Inspiration, 20 

Isaiah, 19, 23 

Isaiah liii., 416 



Japan, transformation of, 178 

religion of, 191, 192 
Jeremiah, 19 
John, St., teaching of, 127, 454, 467, 

501 
Judaism and Christianity, 24, 236 
" Judgments of Value," 93, 254 seq. 
Justification, 129 
Justin, Against Trypho, 25 

Address to the Greeks, 27 



514 



INDEX 



Kaftan, 81-86 

his The Truth of the Christian 
Religion, 82-86 
Kant, 44, 45-50, 94, 337, 379, 492 

his Prolegomena to Metaphysics, 
44,50 

his Critique of Pure Reason, 48 
Karma, doctrine of, 213, 216 
Kelvin, Lord, 356 
Kingdom of God, the, 83, 115 
Kinship, 154 
Knowledge, 326 

of God, 326 



Lang, Andrew, 171 
Language, 367 

Legge, The Life of Confucius, 199 n. 
Lidgett, The Fatherhood of God, 246 
Life, 257, 316 

Limits of Religious Thought, Han- 
sel's, 325 
Locke, 36, 39, 353 
Logos doctrine, 81, 413 
Lotze, 254, 347 

Love, supreme in the universe, 502 
Love of God, the, 501 seq. 
Luther, 35 
Lutheranism, 35 

M 
Man, an active, purposive, depend- 
ent creature, 144, 145 
Mansel, Dean, 51, 325, 495. 
Martineau, Dr., 52, 56, 73, 102, 103, 
371, 381, 400 
his Study of Religion, 52, 73-81 
his Types of Ethical Theory, 79 
Matter, 313 

Matter and motion, 352 
Maya, doctrine of, 206 
Mediation of Christ, 233, 305, 412 
Memory, 368 
Merz, History of European Thought, 

295, 301, 341, 353, 355. 
Messiah, the, 111 



Messianic ideal, the, 109, 111 
Messianic prophecy, 452 
Microcosmos, Lotze's, 347 
MiU, J. S., 368, 428, 495 
Milton's Satan, 441 
Mind, 348 
Miracles, 28, 43 

Hume's essay on, 45, 71 
Miraculous, the, 59, 131-3 
Mohammedanism, 221 seq., 228 
Monism, 262, 321 
Monotheism, 221 
Moralism in religion, 196 
Moral consciousness, 370, 483 
Moral Philosophy, Paley's, 70 
Morality and religion, 157 
Motion, 313, 314 
Motives, 426 

Mysteries, the Greek, 188 
Mysticism, 148, 439 
Myths, Scandinavian, 183 

N 

Nassau, R. H., Fetichism in West 

Africa, 172 
Naturalism, 56 

criticism of, 330 seq. 
Nature-worships, 183-8 
Natural Theology, Paley's, 68, 69 
Natural selection, 320, 347 
Neo-Platonism, 19 
New birth, the, 121, 122, 126, 129, 

235, 446 
Newton, 321 
Nirvana, 214 
Nominalists, 33 
Novum Organum, Bacon's, 37 



Obligation, sense of, 156 

Offices of Christ, 113, 114 

Old Testament, religion of, 18, 19, 

236 seq. 
Ontological argument, the, 36, 49, 

94, 504 
Order, principle of, 344, 364 



INDEX 



515 



Origen, Against Celsus, 29, 30 

Concerning First Principles, 29 
Origin of Species, Darwin's, 318 



Paganism, 18, 25 

Pain, 394 

PaJey, 44, 67, 68, 72 

his Evidences of Christianity, 46, 

68,70 
his Natural Theology, 68, 69 
his Moral Philosophy, 70 
his Horce Paulines, 72 
Pantheism, 334 
Parallelism, 317 
Paul, St., teaching of, 127, 391, 394, 

445, 454, 459, 460 
Pearson, Prof. Karl, 357 
Perfection, spiritual, of God, 489 
Pelasgian religion, 193 
Personality, 67, 68, 407, 433, 449, 

473, 476 
of God, 108, 155, 373, 483, 485 

seq., 501 
of man, 404, 406, 501 
Personalities, great religious, 173, 

174 
Philosophy, the critical, 51 

the transcendental, 52 
of the Unconditioned, Hamilton's, 

51 
Plato, 52, 67, 201, 450 
Platonism, 26 
Pollock's Spinoza, 362 
Polytheism, 18, 172, 185 
Power, the Inscrutable, 339 
Priest, function of, 164 
Prophet, fimction of, 164 
Prophecy, 23, 27, 28, 43, 71 
Prophet religion, in the Old Testa- 
ment, 18, 21, 23 
Propitiation, 162 
Prolegomena, Kant's, 44, 50 
Protagoras, 52 
Protestantism, 35 
Puritanism, 246 
Purpose, 348, 366, 378, 381 



Racovian Catechism, the, 35 
Reason, 32, 33, 41, 48, 50, 52, 65, 
483 
sufficient, 373 
and faith, 38, 39, 40, 123 
Reconciliation, 129, 233, 464 
Redemption, 12, 32, 128, 233, 410 

seq., 417 seq. 
Reflection, necessary to religion, 

20 
Reformation, the, 34, 35 
Reformed Churches, the, 35 
Regeneration. See New Birth. 
Reid and the Scottish school, 46 
Religion, of the Old Testament, 18, 
19,65 
Hebrew, 236 seq. 
Greek, 19, 183, 188, 190, 193 

seq. 
Roman, 19 

Primitive, 65, 66, 182 seq. 
Orgiastic, 187, 188 
the perfect, 176-180, 233 
natural and revealed, 37, 38, 42, 

66,67 
institutions and observances of, 

166 
origin of, 65, 140 
definition of, 138 
elements of, 138 
factors of, 138 
and morality, 157, 168 
and social order, 164 
and theology, 166, 167 
and environment, 168 
evolution of, 171 
Religions, diversity in, 169 

ethnic, 181 seq. 
Renaissance, the, 33, 34 
Responsibility for beUef , 125 

moral, 126 
Resurrection of Christ, 131, 406, 

474 
Revelation, 12, 32, 37, 39, 41, 43, 65, 
69, 88, 117, 120, 176, 225, 232, 
262-264, 327, 477-480 



3> 



516 



INDEX 



Ritschl, 81, 91, 92, 94, 255, 257 
his Christian Doctrine of Justifica- 
tion and Redemption, 92, 93. 
Ritschlian school, the, 81, 86, 102. 



Sacrifice of Christ, 413, 415 

Salvation, way of, 232 

Schoolmen, the, 30 

Scotists, 33 

Self, 36, 350, 368, 427, 439 

Selfhood, 146, 273, 340, 369, 378, 

428, 440, 489 
Sin, 12, 436, 452, 455, 500 

sense of, 59, 234, 419, 464 
Servant of Jehovah, 111 
SonofGod, 109, 112 
Son of Man, 110, 112 
Sonship, Christian, 127, 129, 130, 

227, 231, 271 seq., 411, 474 
of Christ, 104, 109 
Sophocles, 193 
Sovereignty, divine, 108, 240, 246, 

435, 496, 498 seq. 
Spencer, H., 51, 139, 190, 318, 325, 

329, 339, 488, 489 
his Data of Ethics, 331 n. 
Spinoza, 311 

his Ethics, 311 seq., 337, 361, 379, 

385 
Spirit, the Holy, 130, 235, 418, 463 
Spirit of adoption, the, 128 
Stoicism, 26, 201 

Subliminal consciousness, 434, 484 
Substance, 329, 334, 361, 362 
Substitution, 415 
Suffering, 394 



Teleology, a wider needed, 376 
Theology, the final, 103 

and religion, 104 
Totemism, 154 n., 184, 185 
Transcendence of God, 11, 465, 496 

seq., 506 
Trinitate, De, of Augustine, 30 
Trinity, the, 31, 233, 488, 504 seq. 
Truth, the, 20 

conditions of, 20 
TyndaU, 313, 315 

U 
Union with God, 446 
Upanishads, the, 203 seq. 



Value, conservation of, 286 seq. 
''judgments of," 93, 254 seq. 
Vedic religion, 202 
Veracity, 20 

W 

Ward, Prof., Naturalism and Agnos- 
ticism, 363 

Way, the, the Truth, and the Life, Dr. 
Hort's, 8, 11 

Will, the, 422, 428. See FreewiU. 

Wordsworth, quoted, 372 

World, the Christian explanation of, 
294 seq. 
the naturalistic explanation of, 
294 seq. 

Worship, origin of, 162 

Z 

Zarathustra, 218 
Zend-Avesta, the, 218 
Zoroastrianism, 218 seq. 



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